The Influence of Google
Google’s influence on our modern day culture is unparalleled. It is safe to say that there is nothing that does what Google does as well as Google does it. By that, I mean searching. Someone does not say that they will “Yahoo” or “Bing” something; they say that they will Google it. It is this function that has launched Google into something of a cultural phenomenon, and people have been enjoying its awesome ability to find whatever they are looking for.
What many people may not consciously realize, however, is that Google has been constantly improving its search algorithm to bring the user exactly what he/she wants. The goal is to order the results of the search so that the user will find what he/she is looking for at the top, so Google also employs a way to rank the results for the user. The goal of the creators of a website then, is to make their page show up as far up in the rank as possible, so that it gains more exposure, and more people are more likely to visit it. For example, people will typically look as far as a couple pages into the search and find what they are looking for. Results that are in the much later pages are almost never visited. Thus, it is very important to the survival of commercial pages that they be ranked highly in the results of a search algorithm.
Since Google is constantly trying to improve its search results, that means constant updates and innovations that it must introduce on a fairly regular basis. One update that is forthcoming and revolutionary is that Google announced that it will be splitting its search index into two categories: mobile and desktop. The mobile index will be prioritized over the desktop one meaning that the mobile index will receive rapid updates while the desktop one will receive less frequent updates. This is affecting sites since Google is trying to encourage the shift from desktop search to mobile search as more and more people search via their smartphones.
How does this affect sites? Since Google is making a change, so should the sites. To show up in the rankings of the search, the site will at the very least need a mobile or responsive version of the site. In addition, site creators will need to further optimize the speed at which the page loads. In a study, 53% of users will leave a page if the page load time exceeds three seconds. A shift in the way Google searches and ranks the results of its search will also cause a shift on the end of the content that it is searching to keep up with these changes. In the end, it’s all to increase the convenience and relevance of the search tool that we all rely on.
https://www.searchenginejournal.com/google-splitting-search-index-prioritizing-mobile-desktop/176149/