Google: Don’t launch a brand new site on an old domain for Mobile-First Indexing
Whenever you think of building a new website, many of you might prefer to apply an existing old domain name to your site. Right! Do you think this is the right way of building a fresh site? Well, there is no such big deal in making use of the old domain name on the new website. Many people used to follow this approach. However, now it seems to be collapsing in digital marketing. Do you know why? If you use your old domain name in the new website, then your site will not default for mobile-first indexing. What’s the heck is this? This is what you’re saying right. But it is true because in the recent update Google has said this. Are you aware of the recent update of Google? If not, don’t worry! You are at the right place.
Here I will share every minute detail about new sites which Google made an announcement on. So let’s make a start and dig deeper into the update below.
Two days ago, Google said that If anyone would use the old domain name for a new website then their website will not get default for mobile-first indexing. We all know that Google gives more preference to mobile sites than desktop sites. And all the websites launched before July 1, 2019, would default to mobile-first indexing in Google’s index. Here the question is – if you launched a brand new site on an existing old domain name that has not been switched to mobile-first indexing?
Google says new sites launched with old domain will not default to mobile-first indexing
Upon answering the question, John Muller of Google said no, that would not default to the mobile-first indexing. Google will have to access the new site when it detects and make that assessment to move it over or not the way it does for sites launched prior to July 1, 2019.
Here read the official statement of John Muller
On a very simple level, John Muller said, Google keeps a list of the domains that we feel aren’t ready yet.” So if that old domain is on that list, Google won’t consider a re-launch on that domain as a new domain. It will of course eventually detect the new site and crawl it and automatically determines if the site is ready for mobile-first indexing. But it will not just remove it from the “sites not ready for mobile-first indexing list” because a new site was launched on it.
A person on Twitter asked John about the old domain and mobile-first indexing. He said, “with the mobile-first indexing activated by default from September, I was wondering if a brand new site deployed on an existing domain will be treated as a NEW site or if the bot will continue to use an old desktop crawler (unless the switch is already over).
In his reply, John also said, “if you launch a new site on an existing domain, it doesn’t automatically change the status of the domain – we’ll still check to see if the domain overall is ready before removing it from that list.”
How the change will affect your site if you buy old domain name?
There is no doubt if Google makes any changes or introduce anything new will not impact you. It will surely make an impression guys. And here also webmasters will surely see some kind of change if they use an old domain name for their new website. Yes guys, if you buy an old domain name for a new website, it might be that Google uses the indexing settings of the old site with your new site until your new site is checked. This is the reason John Muller said that you read in his statement above.
However, there is that not big practical difference that you will see from this update.
Some reasons why Google prefers mobile-first indexing
Mobile-first indexing means Google primarily uses the mobile version of the content for indexing and ranking. Historically, the index used a desktop version of a page content evaluating the relevance of a page to a user query. Since smartphones launched in the market, the majority is given to mobiles for indexing content. Here are the reasons why Google gives preference to mobile-first indexing:
- Majority of people use smartphone devices to visit websites
- It is easy to get information on anything with mobile
- A lot of traffic webmasters generate via mobile
- Having mobile-friendly sites means more chances of appearing on Google’s search engine results page.
- With the mobile-version of your site, you also rank well on Google.
Therefore, you should also focus on mobile-friendly sites so that Google first index the mobile version of your site than the desktop version. You must also know that mobile-first indexing enabled by default for all new websites back on July 1, 2019. Since then the importance has shifted to mobile-indexing sites.
The bottom line
So guys, if you are planning to launch a brand new websites then you should take the article into consideration. Why I am saying so is because if you don’t do what Google says then you will end up harming your website. Therefore, don’t make a mistake by adding the old domain name to your new website. If you do so then your site will not get indexed for mobile. Due to which you may not be able to generate traffic to your site via mobile. Hope you do as Google said!
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