Dotty Scott explains how Google used to maintain separate indexes for desktop and mobile search, then shifted to mobile-first indexing, where mobile versions rank higher and users see different results based on their device.
In the past, Google, who is the most popular search engine, has had two separate indexes. They started out with their desktop and laptop index. When mobile started to come onto the scene and, and smartphones came out, they created a separate index for mobile. And then, you know, a year or two may have passed, and you probably started hearing the term mobile first, mobile first indexing. And what that simply meant was that the search engines were going to start ranking your mobile version over your desktop version. But they still kept two separate search engines. So if you were looking at the internet on a desktop, then you were served a desktop version of Google's index. And if you were using your mobile phone, you would get the mobile
