It took a long time, but now the time has finally come: Google is rolling out the Mobile First Index, giving a clear signal that priorities are shifting. The change was announced for a long time and many tests were made until the rollout started. However, it is to be expected that many website operators are still not sufficiently prepared and therefore have to bear the consequences.

In November 2016, about 1.5 years ago, Google spoke for the first time about creating a Mobile First Index. Since then there have been speculations again and again when it will start. Google itself was very covered and gave cautious forecasts only for the last tests at the beginning of the year. It has now been announced that the rollout process started on Monday and already have a large number of websites in the Mobile First Index. Webmasters whose sites have already been migrated will receive a notification in the Search Console.

While many website owners have long focused on mobile and optimized their websites accordingly, there are still many who have closed their eyes to it. They are likely to be out of favor now and should do something quick if they hope for visitors via Google. Without responsive design and dynamic content delivery, not much will be possible.

For all those who are not yet in the new index and therefore were not present in the first rollout, of course, the question arises: Will it have negative effects for my ranking? Google calms down the webmasters here and assures that this will not lead to a ranking loss. As long as the indexing is still running, mobile content is not preferred over the desktop variant.