Google to switch completely over to mobile-first indexing by September 2020

Google has announced that by September 2020 all sites will be crawled and indexed by Google using mobile-first indexing. We reported early that this would happen by end-of-year but this blog post from Google says this change will happen by September.

September 2020. Google said, “To simplify, we’ll be switching to mobile-first indexing for all websites starting September 2020.” Most sites have moved over already and you can check if your site has moved over by logging into Google Search Console. More on how to do that over here.

70% moved over already. “From our analysis, most sites shown in search results are good to go for mobile-first indexing, and 70% of those shown in our search results have already shifted over,” Google said. So chances are, your site has already moved over to mobile first indexing.

Years in the making. Google started the mobile-first indexing process in 2016. Google has been working up to this point for almost four-years now. We have had plenty of time to get ready for this and it should come as no surprise to anyone here.

Notices. If your site was not moved over yet, you may have already received a notice from Google with more information. Here is a screen shot of a notice:

Why we care. You now have a date, it is September 2020. If you get one of these notices it is likely a notice you should read and take action on. If Google has issues with accessing your site with the mobile-crawler, then it might impact your indexing and ranking of your web pages in Google.