Google’s Mobile-First Indexing Initiative Is Still Ongoing, Says John Mueller

John Mueller, a spokesperson for Google, announced on Twitter that the final batch of mobile-first indexing is expected to be completed in the next few months. The desktop indexing feature will still be available for a “tiny number of sites”, he added. The process has been ongoing for more than six years, with Google initially rolling out its mobile-first indexing initiative in November 2016.

In November 2022, Mueller had said that the last batch of mobile-indexing was on its way. However, in July of that year, he had earlier announced that the last batch would be released in July, before retracting the statement in August. Despite the delay, Google has continued to migrate websites from desktop-first indexing to mobile-first indexing, with some sites still being transitioned in 2023.

It is worth noting that in May 2021, Google removed any mandatory deadline for the mobile-first indexing switchover. This was after the company pushed the deadline from September 2020 to March 2021. In March 2022, Google announced that the last batch of sites would be migrated to mobile-first indexing soon.

As of now, Google is still in the process of moving some websites to mobile-first indexing, with no official timeline for completion. The company’s mobile-first indexing initiative seeks to enhance mobile search results by using the mobile version of a website’s content as the primary search index.