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You are here: Home / Google / Google Still Working on Separate Mobile Search Index

Google Still Working on Separate Mobile Search Index

June 1, 2016 at 1:28 am PST By Jennifer Slegg

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google separate mobile indexGoogle is still working on their mobile search index, something Google first confirmed last year, although we haven’t heard much about it for a year or so.  The mobile index would be completely separate from the desktop index and would be for searches done on mobile only.

Why is Google working on a mobile only index?  Gary Illyes from Google was speaking at Search Marketing Summit in Sydney and said while desktop was still the majority of searches, it didn’t make sense to use a mobile index.  But now that mobile is more than 50% of searches it makes much more sense.

Illyes said that there are some problems with a mobile index.  When they convert parts of the index from a desktop one to a mobile one, there is a loss of tokens that affects the rankings, which means that there is an issue with ensuring sites are ranking the same with the loss of those tokens.  According to Illyes, “We are losing signals when we convert parts of our index into mobile index because there are fewer tokens on the page.”

Links

People don’t link to mobile content as much as they do to desktop content.  Google found there are fewer linking rank signals on mobile pages when compared to the desktop equivalent.  So this results in pages ranking differently when compared to the desktop index.  This was one of the main problems Google found last year while working on the mobile index.

On Page Content

Mobile specific pages are often shorter or truncated when compared to the desktop version.  This is pretty common, especially for m. mobile sites where there are two pages (canonicalized) for the same article, just one is not quite as comprehensive as the other.  But according to Illyes, the content changes is also impacting rankings as well.  that said, it is sometimes frustrating from a user perspective when you land on a truncated mobile page that doesn’t actually have the information you are looking for, because it is only on the desktop version.

Google has been working on the mobile index for two years, and Illyes said they aren’t quite there yet.  Google publicly confirmed the mobile only index last year, and released some more details on it.  So while we might not have a more definitive answer a bout when we might see it, it is good to know that Google is continuing to work on it.

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Jennifer Slegg

Founder & Editor at The SEM Post
Jennifer Slegg is a longtime speaker and expert in search engine marketing, working in the industry for almost 20 years. When she isn't sitting at her desk writing and working, she can be found grabbing a latte at her local Starbucks or planning her next trip to Disneyland. She regularly speaks at Pubcon, SMX, State of Search, Brighton SEO and more, and has been presenting at conferences for over a decade.
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Latest posts by Jennifer Slegg (see all)

  • 2022 Update for Google Quality Rater Guidelines – Big YMYL Updates - August 1, 2022
  • Google Quality Rater Guidelines: The Low Quality 2021 Update - October 19, 2021
  • Rethinking Affiliate Sites With Google’s Product Review Update - April 23, 2021
  • New Google Quality Rater Guidelines, Update Adds Emphasis on Needs Met - October 16, 2020
  • Google Updates Experiment Statistics for Quality Raters - October 6, 2020

Filed Under: Google, Mobile, SEO

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Comments

  1. Manish Sahani says

    June 7, 2016 at 5:40 am

    Yes, I also noticed the same, My website keywords are stable on desktop but keyword position dropped on Mobile devices.
    🙁

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Jennifer Slegg (2052)

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