Google May Delay Mobile-First Indexing Switch Over Deadline Due To COVID-19

Apr 29, 2020 - 7:31 am 1 by

Google Mobile First Index

In early March, Google announced it would switch fully over to mobile-first indexing by September 2020. But now Google may decide to delay it because of COVID-19. So far, John Mueller from Google said, it seems like things are on schedule but they may decide based on feedback to delay it if they find sites are not moving over due to resource issues.

John said at the 35:46 mark into the video "my guess is within the next month or so we'll make that call and go one way or the other," when it comes to this September deadline. "So far we're still seeing lots of sites shifting over and getting ready for mobile first indexing," he added.

Here is the video at the start time:

Here is the transcript:

What's the status of Google's decision on the mobile first indexing after September? Any delay due to covert 19?

So far we're still seeing lots of sites shifting over and getting ready for mobile first indexing. So we we haven't completely made up her mind that we will stick with this date but we want to give it a little bit more time to settle down and see how it works out.

My guess is within the next month or so we'll make that call and go one way or the other. It's also really useful to have feedback from any of you who are running into issues around this where you're seeing that your development team just isn't available to make these kind of changes or anything around that. The more feedback we have the easier it is to just make a decision on this. Because otherwise we just see sites are being improved and we think oh well people are still doing the good work. Kind of getting things ready so maybe we don't need to change the date. But send us feedback.

My gut feeling - Google will postpone it to March 2021.

Forum discussion at YouTube Community.

 

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