In our previous post, we stated that Google is soon going to make certain changes in its indexing policy that might affect your position and performance on search engines. The post basically centered around making your website accessible to Googlebot’s smartphone user agent.
However, certain users have misinterpreted the concept and are getting scared of the new update. Let me break down this update and what you need to do to remain indexed.
Google will not stop indexing your website even if it is not mobile-friendly. It is just appointing a new agent to track the mobile accessibility of your website, i.e., Googlebot’s Smartphone User Agent
Earlier, Google used Googlebots to crawl the website but now it is ensuring that the mobile version of your website can also be easily crawled by its mobile programs, i.e. Googlebot’s smartphone user agent. Earlier, the requirements were a bit broader, however, now the main focus is the mobile accessibility of your site.
In fact, even for your desktop versions, if there was any issue in your network or HTTP error, the site pages were not indexable. Similar is the case with a mobile version.
The only thing you need to ensure is that your site is accessible for the smartphone user agent to crawl and index.
No matter if your site is mobile-friendly or not, Google will crawl the website but index its pages only if it meets the indexing criteria.
However, it would be great if your website is mobile-friendly for it really connects your users and makes them face fewer disappointments.
To avoid any issues, look for common errors that might stop the crawler from accessing information on your site, such as blocked resources in your robots.txt file, server errors, or any other challenge that might impede Googlebot’s access.
Also, make sure to constantly check Google Search Console for crawl errors or accessibility issues.
