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Yesterday, I posted fake news around the potential of Google testing the mobile-first index in the wild. Well, I did say maybe and this is what people were asking. But it seems to be wrong and rather a bug with Google showing desktop URLs in the mobile results. In fact, it may be that Google deindexed the mobile URLs by accident.
John Mueller of Google somewhat confirmed the bug on Twitter this morning saying "we noticed too and are looking into it on our side." "Seems like a quirk on our side," John added. Here are the tweets:
@razbithume yeah, looks weird :). We noticed too and are looking into it on our side. Seems like a quirk on our side.
— John ☆.o(≧▽≦)o.☆ (@JohnMu) February 8, 2017
In short, if you searched for some sites that ran over the m-dot version, i.e. m.ikea.com or m.youtube.com Google would show the desktop URL and not the mobile m-dot URL. This obviously doesn't impact responsive sites but it does impact m-dot sites.
Many noticed this:
Has all m. domains had their front-pages de-indexed? Even https://t.co/lxcEyhwCpu seems to have trouble. @methode or @JohnMu?
— Bernt Johansson (@berntjohansson) February 7, 2017
In fact, Tejas Thakkar posted a more detailed look at this issue over here.
I suspect this bug will be fixed soon but it is good to know Google is aware of it and working on it.
Forum discussion at Twitter.
