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The best practices documentation on mobile-first indexing has been updated by Google. The new documentation contains a substantial amount of facts that were not there in the previous documentation. The documentation has a specific aim.

It’s been crafted to help the owners of the website in setting the seal on the fact that they can provide the best user experience, while the users access the site from both desktop and mobile.

In this post, I’ve come up with a comparison of the archived version of Google’s mobile first-indexing best practices and the latest edition of the same. I’ve created the comparison using the Wayback Machine. This has helped me a lot in pointing out the changes. The purpose of this post is to make you aware of the new updates. Keep reading!!

However, before delving into the topic, it’s vital to mention that the information is not new. In actuality, it’s an excellent blend of suggestions, recommendations and best practices that Google has already shared in recent years. Everything is jotted down in this developer document.

The Additional Information

It’s worth keeping in mind that Google never exaggerates while stating that a ‘substantial’ amount of information has been updated in the new documentation. The majority of the updates are focused on a particular fact. It says that the sites should give a similar experience on both desktop and mobile. Let’s check out what they say!

• Googlebot should be able to crawl both desktop and mobile page resources as well as contents.
• The meta tags of both the mobile and other sites should be the same.
• Both the mobile and desktop site should contain the same structured data.
• The headings of both sites should be the same.
• The contents of both the mobile and desktop site should be the same.

What if the Contents of the Sites Differ?

As per Google, in case, the site owners put reduced contents in the mobile site intentionally, then the site owner is going to get less traffic.

“WARNING: If it’s your intention that the mobile page should have less content than the desktop page, you can expect some traffic loss when your site is enabled mobile-first indexing, since Google can’t get as much information from your page as before.”

Things to Keep in Mind While Separating M-Dot URLs

The updated version of the best practices by Google includes the following requirements for m-dot URLs.

• The message related to error pages for both the mobile and desktop site should be same.
• The mobile version should not contain any broken or fragment URL.
• If the desktop version of your website offers different contents, then the mobile site should also show-up the same /equivalent materials.

Updates Related to Fixing Common Errors

Google has updated the troubleshooting section for troubleshooting the common errors related to mobile-first indexing. It looks like the following.

What Should You Consider for Videos and Images

Well, the information that I’ve shared in the previous section of this article typically involves the textual contents. Now, I’ll take you through the updates released by Google for the video and image contents. Keep reading!!

• Always use images that are of supreme quality.
• Consider placing the video contents of the website in such a space that they can be found easily while accessing the site from mobile.
• The alt text of the images must be the same for both mobile and desktop site.
• Say a big NO to the URLs that keep on changing every time while loading the videos/images of the page.
• Never use images or videos that are not of supported tags or format.
• The descriptive titles, filenames, captions…every text used for videos and/or images must be the same for both the mobile and desktop site.

Hope this helps! Stay well and keep yourself updated with the latest trends of the online world!