New websites will have their mobile friendly content crawled in order to index pages and show relevant snippets.

This is the latest in a series of announcements made by Google, who found in 2016 that the majority of their users start their searches on mobile devices.

For existing websites, as long as they fulfil best practice requirements in terms of technical, design and content requirements – including mobile first guidelines – this should have no negative impact on rankings. These changes are centred around searching and indexing rather than ranking content, which still serves as a determining factor in establishing Relevance and Authority.

Google’s interest in meeting the needs of the mobile majority means that it has undertaken several initiatives that impact on rankings, including page speed. Since last July slow loading mobile content has been pushed down the rankings.

In 2018 the average time it took to fully load a mobile landing page was 22 seconds. Far too long for the majority of users who, research has indicated, will leave in increasing numbers at times in excess of 3 seconds. 

Fast loading mobile first sites are an essential part of SEO especially with video in 2019, make sure yours is up to speed. 

Just a quick add on to this – I don’t use it anymore but I still have that Blackberry! I miss typing on proper keys on a phone, guess that is my age.