Living in a mobile first index world
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The document details the transition to Google's mobile-first indexing, highlighting the progressive rollout since its announcement in 2016, with many websites still operating under a desktop-first mindset. It discusses factors influencing a website's move to the mobile-first index, such as website type, size, load times, and content similarity between mobile and desktop versions. The findings emphasize the importance of responsive design and proper SEO practices for a successful transition to the mobile-first index.
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Living in a mobile first index world
- 1. Living in a Mobile First (Indexing) World Frank Vitovitch // Botify slideshare.net/BotifySEO @FrankieVSEO
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- 3. Agenda Background on the Mobile First Index What is the current state of the Mobile First Index? What appears to be influencing what sites Google moves to the MFI? Real customer MFI transition stories - the good and the bad
- 4. Google is rolling out the mobile-first index progressively across all websites.
- 5. Why are we even here, Google announced this ages ago Google initially announced it was introducing a mobile first index in November 2016, but the roll out has been slow and steady. Our data shows that there is still a large portion of the web still living in a desktop first world.
- 6. You know all of this already, but… No changes in regards to the first 2 fundamental steps (crawling & indexing) With the mobile-first index, the relevance of a page will only depend on the mobile version Without a mobile site, a desktop site will still be crawled and used by Google to determine rankings
- 7. What is the current state of the Mobile First Index?
- 8. Why did we conduct this new study on the mobile-first index? What is the current state of the mobile-first index? What are the criteria that determine whether or not a website is moved to the mobile-first index? How does the mobile-first index impact Google’s crawl on transitioned websites? Questions we wanted to answer:
- 9. Big questions, bigger stats: meet our unprecedented dataset 498 34.5B 66.8B Unique domains belonging to one of the following industries: Retail Publisher Classifieds URLs analyzed, with data taken from Botify Analytics and server log files. Unique Googlebot crawls analyzed, taken from 30 days of web server log files for each website.
- 10. Percentage of compliant pages (indexable pages) crawled by Google in 30 days. Crawl Ratio Desktop Index vs. Mobile-First Index We consider a website “in” the mobile-first index when the crawl volume for the Google Smartphone user agent is higher than the crawl volume for the Google Search user agent for over 30 days. A brief note on terminology
- 11. We studied websites of all shapes, sizes, and industries Dataset by IndustriesDataset by Website Sizes (in pages)
- 12. Sites with structural, performative, and geographic diversity
- 13. One quick note about AMP AMP pages are not an alternative to a mobile website. If you have AMP and you don’t have a mobile website, Google will take into account the Desktop version to rank the AMP pages. If you have AMP and a mobile website, Google will take into account the mobile version to rank the AMP pages. In any case, you should make sure that an AMP page is not much different from the main page.
- 14. Google continues to roll out the MFI progressively, but more than 1/3 of websites surveyed have not transitioned JUNE - JULY ‘18 SEPT - OCT ‘18 9.6% 34% JUNE-JULY ‘19 63%
- 15. Publishers have rocketed into MFI, while marketplace/listings websites have lagged 52% 9% Potentially due to fresh content, publishers are crawled by Google more often than retailers and classifieds. This leads to higher crawl ratios. Does that explain the high number of publishers in MFI? MARKETPLACES RETAIL PUBLISHERS 62% 7% 73% 11% Increases since October 2018
- 16. We observed huge spikes in crawling in Summer 2018 as Google began moving sites to the MFI
- 17. While Google’s crawl has evolved to more mobile crawls, mobile/desktop traffic share hasn’t shifted significantly Google’s Crawl Evolution Traffic Share by Device
- 18. The largest study of the mobile-first index based on real customer data.
- 19. Website’s Type Industry Website’s Size Mobile Website Type Language Log File KPIs Crawl Volume (Search & Smartphone) Crawl Ratio Desktop Visits Mobile Visits Avg. Visits Structural KPIs Load Times PageRank Dilution Outlinks Content Size Content vs. Template % How does Google prioritize websites for MFI? We tested for:
- 20. The Mobile-First Index loves responsive websites Responsive websites are much more likely to enter the mobile-first index first. Google appears to feel that it’s less risky to transition responsive websites, since the same page is served regardless of device/user agent. By contrast, Mobile URL and Dynamic Serving websites serve different pages depending on the user agent. This can hurt content parallelism, if the mobile page doesn’t match the desktop page. Mobile-First Index* Desktop Index PCT OF WEBSITES IN MFI BY MOBILE SETUP
- 21. Smaller websites are more likely to enter the MFI first ● Smaller websites have a greater chance of entering the mobile-first index first. ● Google is giving the largest sites longer to prepare, or is moving them over at a slower pace to ensure successful transitions, or both. ● From a risk assessment point of view, this makes sense, because smaller websites should be easier to move for both Google and the the site stakeholders. NUMBER OF URLs Mobile-First Index* Desktop Index PCT OF WEBSITES IN MFI BY WEBSITE SIZE
- 22. Websites with more content per page are more in the MFI PCT OF WEBSITES IN MFI BY AVG CONTENT SIZE PCT OF WEBSITES PER INDUSTRY
- 23. Websites with cleaner signals appear to move into MFI sooner Websites that are diluting less PageRank on non-compliant pages are more into the Mobile-First Index Websites with a lower PageRank Dilution may be considered as higher quality websites by Google. These websites are also have fewer conflicting signals to Google making them easier to crawl. Mobile-First Index* Desktop Index PCT OF WEBSITES IN MFI PAGERANK DISTRIBUTION
- 24. Very slow loading websites may be getting transitioned to MFI slower Websites that loaded in < 1500 ms , 1000 ms, and 500 ms have transitioned at similar rates, while websites that took longer than 2000 ms on average have transitioned at a slower rate. Mobile-First Index* Desktop Index PCT OF WEBSITES IN MFI BY AVERAGE LOAD TIMES
- 25. Surprisingly, many SEO indicators DO NOT impact transition to MFI We’ve tested the following criteria with no significant results: Content / Template Ratio Avg. Visits Mobile Traffic Share Mobile vs. Desktop Content Visibility Outlinks Visits Language
- 26. Actual data, real results: customer use cases A Publisher that transitioned When things don’t just go right, but actually get better, during transition to mobile-first index.1 A Tale of Two Transitions: Uh-Oh A Mobile URL website sees its crawl plummet after the transition.2 Sites Who Haven’t Transitioned Some real-world examples of websites that haven’t transitioned and the challenges they have3
- 27. 1 A tale of two transitions: smooth When things don’t just go right, but actually get better, during a responsive site’s transition to the mobile-first index.
- 28. Temporary crawl volume increases when the website enters the mobile- first index MFI transition generates huge surge in crawl activity
- 29. Backbone of site’s steady performance: content parallelism between desktop/mobile 3.0% % URLs Crawled by Google METRICS TO TRACK SUCCESS Visits Volume on URLs Crawled by Botify Active URLs from Google 6.2% 18.1%
- 30. 2 A tale of two transitions: uh-oh A Mobile URL website sees its crawl plummet after the transition.
- 31. Same movie: MFI transition generates huge surge in crawls… EXCEPT... Temporary crawl volume increases when the website enters the mobile- first index URLS CRAWLED BY GOOGLEBOT BY USER-AGENT BY DAY
- 32. *From September 9th to October 9th Long term crawl volume deteriorates. Key KPIs tank across the board. 28.2% % URLs Crawled by Google METRICS TO TRACK SUCCESS Visits Volume on URLs Crawled by Botify Active URLs from Google 32 19.5% 21.1% URLS CRAWLED BY GOOGLEBOT BY USER-AGENT BY DAY
- 33. 87% of the URLs have content similarity below 60% between mobile and desktop versions. What sealed the doom? Low content similarity rears its ugly head.
- 34. 3 Sites Who Haven’t Made the Transition Some real-world examples of websites that haven’t transitioned and the challenges they have
- 35. Despite this website being < 30,000 URLs, it still hasn’t made the switch A small marketplace mobile website that still hasn’t transitioned URL DISTRIBUTION BY COMPLIANCE CRAWL DISTRIBUTION BY USER-AGENT
- 36. On average, this website’s mobile pages have < 50% average words per page. Most of its mobile pages are not similar to their desktop equivalents URL DISTRIBUTION BY COMPLIANCE CRAWL DISTRIBUTION BY USER-AGENT
- 37. And many of its bidirectional signals are not properly configured BIDIRECTIONAL SIGNAL ISSUES ● The mobile alternate page is not linked in the Mobile website's structure ● Mobile page's canonical tag is not matching the Desktop page ● The alternate tag is missing on some Desktop pages
- 38. And finally, a large retail responsive website that isn’t living in a mobile first (indexing) world URL DISTRIBUTION BY COMPLIANCE CRAWL DISTRIBUTION BY USER-AGENT
- 39. More than 40% of this website’s internal page rank is sent to non-compliant pages Two issues appear to be holding this website from making the transition PAGE RANK DILUTION LOW CONTENT SIZE
- 40. So, are you ready for the Mobile-First Index? 7 tips for a successful transition right now.
- 41. The big 7: key MFI tips that any site can implement Ensure site performance by enforcing content parallelism. Foresee and confirm MFI transition through log file analysis. Optimize user experience by improving mobile load times. Verify mobile version is accessible to Google Smartphone. Embrace coherence by aligning schema for desktop/mobile versions. Maintain seamless navigation by properly updating your hreflang tags. Keep all common mobile best practices (rel=alternate / rel=canonical)
- 42. Stop by our booth if you’d like to learn more or if you’d just like to have a chat about SEO. THANK YOU!