How Google’s ‘mobile first’ change will affect news websites

By MixDex Article may include affiliate links

Google has announced it will switch over to “mobile first” indexing in September 2020 — so how do you know if your news organization’s website is ready?

First, a quick explanation of “mobile first.” In this sense, it refers mainly to Google’s intention to start indexing websites with its mobile bot as opposed to the desktop one.

While Google says the desktop bot will continue to be used in select cases, it is advising website owners and managers to ensure that sites are mobile friendly.

This first and foremost means that your website design must be responsive and render correctly on smaller screens.

If you already use Search Console, Google recommends this tool for verifying if there are any issues with your mobile indexing. The company is also sending out email alerts to users who don’t meet the requirements, but it’s still a good idea to double check on your own.

If you aren’t using the free tool, it’s relatively easy to get up and running, though it may require administrator access to verify your site.

Another key takeaway is that Google notes that “m dot” sites are not recommended. This is a reference to having separate, distinct URLs for the mobile version of your site such as m.yourdomain.com or yourdomain.com/mobile.

It also appears that usage of tools such as JSON-LD, accelerated mobile pages and rich snippets will continue to play a key role in how news sites are crawled and indexed.

It’s worth noting that pages using AMP typically have a separate, distinct URL, but given that Google is the primary backer of the framework, it seems likely these won’t count as “m dot” URLs.