Google starts ranking sites in Search results based on their mobile version

NEW DELHI: Google is making web browsing a better experience for smartphone users around the globe. The search giant a year ago said it was test ranking those websites on its search results, which have a mobile-friendly version. Now, its implementation has started taking place. In simple words, websites with mobile-friendly design will get priority in search results.

For those unaware, Google started testing this feature a year ago. For now, the search giant ranks website based on their desktop design. "To recap, currently our crawling, indexing, and ranking systems typically look at the desktop version of a page's content, which may cause issues for mobile searchers when that version is vastly different from the mobile version," said the Google webmasters blog post.

"Mobile-first indexing means that we'll use the mobile version of the content for indexing and ranking, to better help our - primarily mobile - users find what they're looking for," added the firm.

The firm says that those websites that make use of a 'responsive' design layout won't have to do anything. However, the company has still given some extra tips to webmasters to ensure their website is ready for mobile-first indexing.

Some of the pointers include:

-High quality content including text, images with alt-attributes and videos in crawlable and indexable formats.

-Structured data should also be present for better search result crawling. "Ensure URLs within the structured data are updated to the mobile version on the mobile pages," adds the firm.

-The desktop and the mobile versions should also have metadata tags/descriptions.

-Website creators should also keep a check on the servers on which the site is based on.

-They should have enough capacity to handle increased crawl rate. "This doesn't affect sites that use responsive web design and dynamic serving, only sites where the mobile version is on a separate host, such as m.example.com," says Google.

It has been added that the process has already been started for 'a handful of sites'.

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