Since 2016, Google has been working on making mobile-first indexing the default behavior of its search engine. Using this indexing type, Google Search will primarily use a page’s mobile content for creating a search index and ranking.
As of March 2020, Google has announced that by September 2020 all sites will be crawled and indexed by Google using mobile-first indexing. Currently, Google notes 70% of sites shown in search have already been switched over.
What Does this Mean for the Remaining 30%. Google has begun notifying webmasters of the issues they need to address by September so their website(s) can start moving over to mobile-first indexing. We advise that you keep an eye out for these alerts to prevent a decline in your website rankings and traffic.
What to Expect in September 2020. When Google flips the switch to mobile-first indexing, websites will see an increase in Googlebot’s crawling, while Google updates its index to your website’s mobile version. Depending on the domain, this change can take some time. Afterwards, you can expect to still occasionally see crawls with the traditional desktop Googlebot, but most crawling for Search will be done with Google’s mobile smartphone user-agent.
If you have any questions, please contact our team for more information.