Google is not going to take into account the contents of computer websites anymore to evaluate the relevance of the pages.
When in 2015, Google made by respect of its standard in mobile-friendly websites a signal to reinforce its search engine for smartphones, it forced most web editors to adopt the responsive design or to create mobile websites. As more than 50% of requests are made from smartphones, Google wants to ensure that the users using them would get on websites using designs adapted to their little screens.
However, up to this point, Google robots are still exploring the computer versions of websites to class the pages by the search results. Hence, even for the mobile version of the index, it’s on websites made for computer screens that Google analyses the information. Yet, it can happen that information (taking into account the referencing) is present on the computer website, but absent on the same mobile version of the page.
And on its blog, the firm, Mountain View, announced that it was going to change that. Its goal, for the long term, is that only mobile sites are explored by its robots – and not computer ones. In other words, the Google index becomes «mobile-first».
Speaking about the problem, Doantam Phan, Product Manager at Google, stated, “Our filing system generally examines the page contents of a computer version to evaluate its relevance for the user. This can create problems when the mobile version has less content than the computer version, because our algorithms don’t evaluate the page that will actually be seen by the user on his mobile.”
Google, however, will not change the features of its search engine from one day to the next.
Currently, Mountain View speaks of experiences. This change in operations of the search engine will only happen on a small scale. It will only be implemented once Google can be sure to offer a “good user experience.”
In any case, Google is already demanding that editors consider modifications on their sites if they are suspectable to be affected by this «potential» change on its search engine. In principle, those who opted for a responsive design should not be affected, since the content is the same, but it’s the layout of the blocks that change in function of the size of the screen or window. Nonetheless, for the other configurations, the editors will have to «consider to undertake some modifications».
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