Google’s Mobile-first Index is expected to arrive in 2018. As reported by Search Engine Land, in a drive to help prepare webmasters to prepare for it, Google has hinted them to switch m-dot domain to responsive.

The responsive domains deliver faster performance due to absence of proxy server. In it all content is served from a single URL so the content fits any screen size. Also responsive domains’ single URL approach boosts search engine rankings.

Search Engine Land’s Barry Schwartz says, “Google said in a recent “webmaster office hours” video (at the 25:16 mark) that if you are planning at some point to migrate your m-dot domain to a fully responsive website, then you should do it before this mobile-first index goes live.

The rationale is that right now, Google has a desktop-first index. So Google doesn’t really index your m-dot; they just annotate the m-dot URLs, but there is no true indexing of your m-dot content. So if you did a migration from m-dot to your main www now, Google doesn’t have to index anything, it just updates those mobile annotations to say the main website is mobile-friendly because it is responsive”.

Google advice: Switch your m-dot domain to responsive before the mobile-first index rollout

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