Google has recently announced that they will split their search engine into two separate indexes. In a few months, there will be one index for mobile search and one for desktop, with mobile search being considered the primary one.
Two separate indexes – what does this really mean? To begin with, it’s safe to assume that if you’re outside of Google’s headquarters in Mountain View, it won’t affect you that much. Their developers are likely working day and night on this, but for your search engine optimization, the effects will probably be marginal.
As always in the world of SEO, people tend to suffer from a severe case of shiny object syndrome. Therefore, in the coming months, there will be a lot of noise about how mobile is the true mother of all SEO. A shiny new object is in town, and like confused birds, our industry tends to become hypnotized by it. The mobile index is said to be the fresher of the two, likely because of Google’s ability to determine your location more accurately when you’re browsing from a phone. They want to make full use of local search.
However, the idea that this will make a real difference for SEO, at least in the current situation, seems unreasonable to me. SEO is done the same way for mobiles as it is for laptops, heavy desktop computers, or tablets of various kinds. It’s not the size of the screen that matters. Of course, being mobile-optimized may give you an advantage on mobile devices, but the other factors still work the same way. So, no need to panic.
With that said…
With that said, it is undeniably a bit exciting to look at how much hope Google has in mobile search. There’s no doubt that they believe they can get far more ad clicks there than on desktop. This is how we should view Google’s development—they are always looking for their steady 20% growth per year, and on desktop, they have more or less already completely dominated.
Mobile has another huge advantage compared to desktop: We, who are a bit accustomed to using mice or touchpads, rarely click on things by mistake. On mobile, however, ad clicks come in at such a rate that even newspapers are seeing somewhat positive CTR on their banners.
Google has much to gain from winning the mobile battle. It’s no coincidence that they keep trying to launch a phone once again, despite it seeming like Apple had won the hardware battle for the foreseeable future.
As you can understand, this article is mostly speculative, even though it’s based on reasonably qualified guesses, so keep that in mind when using this information.
Update: We’ve seen some developments
Since this post was written, quite a few things have happened, and we now feel confident enough to offer recommendations on how to handle Google’s mobile push. Things are still not 100% clear as of writing, but we believe we have enough solid information to take a stance.
Magnus Bråth
CEO
Magnus is one of the world's most prominent search marketing specialists and primarily works with management and strategy at his agency Brath AB.