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Google To Divide Its Index, Giving Mobile Users Better and Fresher Content (searchengineland.com)
Desktop Google searches could soon feel slightly out of touch compared to those done via smartphones as the company begins to push mobile search. Google has said it is fully splitting its search index into two versions: a rapid updated mobile one, and a secondary search index for the desktop web. SearchEngineLand reports: The news came today during a keynote address from Gary Illyes, a webmaster trends analyst with Google, at Pubcon. Illyes didn't give a timeline in his talk, but in a follow-up with Search Engine Land, he confirmed that it would happen within "months." Google first announced that it was experimenting with the idea of a mobile index last year at SMX East. Since that time, Google's clearly decided that a mobile index makes sense and is moving ahead with the idea. It's unclear exactly how the mobile index will work. For example, since the mobile index is the "primary" index, will it really not be used for any desktop queries? Will it only contain "mobile-friendly" content? How out-of-date will the desktop index be? Desktop usage is now a minority of Google queries but still generates substantial usage. The most substantial change will likely be that by having a mobile index, Google can run its ranking algorithm in a different fashion across "pure" mobile content rather than the current system that extracts data from desktop content to determine mobile rankings.
I'm confused by this. Is Google really going to make it's mobile search "better" or more "up-to-date," which not improving the desktop version? What's the motivation here -- to annoy desktop users?
Or is this more about optimization of some sort, i.e., that mobile users perhaps "prefer" different types of results (according to Google's algorithms), so they're trying to provide those mobile users with something a little more customized?
Well, regardless, I've never understood Google ever since they broke verbatim search (the ways it breaks have gotten progressively worse over the last 10 years or so). I can understand that most folks can't figure out how to use actual full-text search. But for those of us who actually do know and realize it's generally the most efficient and fastest way to find precisely tailored results, I don't understand why Google wouldn't even provide an option. Oh well...
(P.S. For those of you who still think "verbatim" exists, it fails in all sorts of cases. Trust me, or go to the Google discussion forums about this and you'll see thousands of complaints about where it fails. You can try the intext: or allintext: operators, which are generally better than Google's current version of verbatim, but they still break in all sorts of unpredictable ways.)
Appy Google knows that ONLY apps can app apps, NOT LUDDITE desktops!
Apps!