Mobile-first index — Google will warn you about possible problems using the Search Console

Google warns sites about the problems that can appear after they launch a mobile-first index. Alerts will be sent out by Search Console. About it told the representative of the Google John Mueller during the last hangout for webmasters.

Those sites that use responsive design, the problems likely will not. The same webmasters who use other ways of optimizing their resources for mobile devices will need to make some changes to their sites are for correctly indexed after the start to mobile-first index.

Mueller also said that Google will announce the launch date of the new index when it is assigned.

We will inform people when we get closer, when we actually have a date, so there is sufficient time for people to kind of resolve issues that they may need to resolve.

We’ll try to also inform sites where we recognize issues, so if we recognize that maybe your mobile version doesn’t have all of the same content or markup that your desktop version has then we’ll try and let you know about that through Search Console as well, so that you kind of are aware of these issues and kind of have time to resolve them. — said googler.

Answering questions from webmasters, Mueller said that they will have enough time to prepare for the launch mobile-first index. The start new model index will not be sudden.

Recall that Google began testing mobile-first index in October 2016. This means that in the future, search algorithms will be primarily to evaluate the relevance of the mobile version of the page, and in its absence – the desktop. In the coming months, Google will experiment with the updated index in a small sample of users. At the end of testing it will be launched worldwide.