There isn't much new yet with the mobile first index at Google outside of what I reported out of SMX East but at PubCon yesterday, Google said they will not be moving sites to the mobile first index that are not ready for the mobile first index. Not yet at least.
Gary Illyes said this in the Googler panel at PubCon. Here are a few tweets covering what he said:
Right now, sites that aren't ready are NOT being moved to the mobile first index. #pubcon @methode
— Ryan Jones (@RyanJones) November 8, 2017
Sites that are not ready for mobile first will not be moved over to mobile first indexing right now. @methode #pubcon
— Jennifer Slegg (@jenstar) November 8, 2017
"For now, sites that are not ready are not being moved to the mobile first index." @methode #pubcon
— Marie Haynes (@Marie_Haynes) November 8, 2017
So no need to panic if your site is not yet ready to be in the mobile first index. You have a bit more time. And Google did promise us a blog post preparing webmasters and publishers for the switch. I would have to suspect it won't be a mad rush and panic when the blog post comes out since Google said time and time again that the process of this mobile first index will be really slow.
Forum discussion at Twitter.
