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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 How out-of-date will the desktop index be?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.
Won't this simply push desktop users to use the mobile site, and if needs be, spoof their browser identifier?
What a daft idea. I'm sat at a £3000 computer but need to use my £100 phone to get the best results? Plus I'll have look twice as search anxiety will mean I'll worry about missing a result.
After they dropped classic maps It's like they want people to use bing!
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.)
The idea is to install a mobile app. Same as with e.g. FB - there are www and m website versions, but also apps. Same with many other companies.
Why? Because an app can have access to more data on your mobile, which a website can't (yet) reach.
At least, that's what I think.
Free, as in your money being freed from the confines of your account.
Particularly since you don't exactly tell the 600 lb gorilla on the bus where they can't sit.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
Won't this simply push desktop users to use the mobile site, and if needs be, spoof their browser identifier?
Well, I do the exact opposite: when connecting from an ARM computer, be it a laptop or a SoC, I get a useless "mobile" pages on many websites. Some will notice NoScript and redirect to the normal version because javascript is ubiquitely required for mobile crap, but for many, you need to spoof for sanity.
The creatures outside looked from Alt-Right to Antifa; but already it was impossible to say which was which.
Google is a snorky dingle dong with the face of a butt.
Right now Google lower-ranks your site for a variety of reasons relating to "but it doesn't work on a phone [crying sound]." While it makes sense to optimize for a phone normally (if trying to reach the largest audience), there are many cases where it actually hurts the site. I wonder if this means that the desktop index will remove those prioritization, allowing some of the old, but gold, content to bubble back up.
Also, I think Google using their monopoly power to decide how "popular" or "relevant" your site is to a search by if it cottons to their favored development styles is a pretty clear anti-trust violation.
Your ad here. Ask me how!
First it ruined web "design" by giving us huge fonts, mystery navigation and full width text. Now it's going to ruin search too? I'm gonna make my own internet, and none of you millenial shitsters are invited.
This might actually be more about the crawl than the index. The mobile index could be set to crawl content in mobile format only, and more often.
What makes freshness important, in the first place? Mostly celebrity gossip, and the retail deal of the hour. Neither of those are functions people do much on PCs anyway.
Still, if Google decides not to keep long-form content reasonably fresh (if not fresher) in their desktop index, it foreshadows a Yahooesque self-inflicted extinction event of their traditional core brand.