谷歌调整搜索算法，向移动优先迈出一大步

谷歌向移动化领域又迈进了一大步，开始在索引中使用网站的移动版，而不是电脑版内容。

多年前，当更多人开始在手机和移动设备上进行搜索时，谷歌调整了算法，对在移动设备上展示良好的网站给予更高的排名。

之后在2016年末，谷歌宣布将开始调整搜索排名系统，优先展示网站的移动版而非电脑版内容。调整的原因是有时候电脑版网站当中会包含一些在移动版中无法显示的元素，如果移动用户点击谷歌搜索结果，却没有看到他们想看的内容，他们就会不满。

现在，经过一年半的试验，谷歌宣布已经开始调整搜索算法，将优先显示“遵循移动优先索引最佳实践的”网站的移动版。也就是说，这些网站的移动版和电脑版所包含的内容及元数据完全相同。

软件工程师张帆（音译）写道：“我们的抓取、索引和排名系统通常使用电脑版的网页内容，如果电脑版内容与移动版内容存在太大的区别，这会给移动搜索用户带来麻烦。移动优先索引意味着我们将使用移动版网页内容进行索引和排名，以更好地帮助用户找到他们搜索的内容，主要是移动用户。”

但谷歌强调仅提供电脑友好内容的网站不需要恐慌，因为“相对于没有通过这种方式抓取到的移动版内容或者电脑版内容，通过移动优先索引方式抓取的内容并不具有排名优势。”

但考虑到谷歌在2015年进行的搜索排名调整，人们显然应该提高自己网站的移动友好度。（财富中文网）

译者：刘进龙/汪皓

Google has made another big step in its shift towards mobile, by starting to link to the small-screen rather than desktop versions of many websites.

A few years ago, when more people started searching through their phones and tablets than on desktop computers, Google changed its algorithm to give higher rankings to sites that display well on a mobile device.

Then, in late 2016, the company said it would start steering its ranking systems towards the mobile rather than desktop versions of sites. This was because desktop sites sometimes include elements that are missing on their mobile versions—if a mobile user clicks on a Google result expecting to see something that then doesn’t show up, it’s frustrating.

Now, after a year and a half of experimenting with that latter shift, Google said it has started steering its search algorithm towards the mobile versions of sites that “follow the best practices for mobile-first indexing.” That essentially means sites that include the same content and metadata on both mobile and desktop versions.

“Our crawling, indexing, and ranking systems have typically used the desktop version of a page’s content, which may cause issues for mobile searchers when that version is vastly different from the mobile version,” wrote software engineer Fan Zhang. “Mobile-first indexing means that we’ll use the mobile version of the page for indexing and ranking, to better help our—primarily mobile—users find what they’re looking for.”

Google stressed that those running sites with only desktop-friendly content needn’t panic, as “content gathered by mobile-first indexing has no ranking advantage over mobile content that’s not yet gathered this way or desktop content.”

However, it was clear that people should continue to make their sites more mobile-friendly, due to the ranking changes Google introduced in 2015.