What does this mean?
Put simply, it means that google is now looking at the mobile version of your website instead of the desktop version when deciding where your site should rank. Assuming you’ve got an up to date responsive design this could result in a traffic boost. If your site doesn’t cater for mobile users however you may find yourself penalised and your site pushed down the listings.
Am I affected?
This should be fairly easily spotted by looking at your traffic in Google Analytics, if there is a noticeable dip around mid-September then you may want to take a look at how your site performs on mobile devices.
What is expected?
Basically, your site needs to offer a seamless transition to smaller screen sizes without any horizontal scrolling. Elements need to be of a decent enough size to see clearly and no elements should be unusable. Speed is also a factor – heavyweight slow sites don’t typically works as well on mobile devices due to their lower bandwidth.
What can I do?
We’re experts at mobile websites – we can take your existing site and make it work, or even offer you a brand new site that will work on anything you can throw at it. With more users than ever before using mobile devices to access websites, mobile compliance cannot be ignored.
Take a look at our website services page for more information.
Further reading
Google Webmaster Tools: https://www.google.com/webmasters/
Google Analytics: https://analytics.google.com/analytics/
Best practices for mobile-first indexing: https://developers.google.com/search/mobile-sites/mobile-first-indexing