Mobile-first indexing best practices
Mobile-first indexing means Google predominantly uses the mobile version of the content for indexing and ranking. Historically, the index primarily used the desktop version of a page's content when evaluating the relevance of a page to a user's query. Since the majority of users now access Google Search with a mobile device, Googlebot primarily crawls and indexes pages with the smartphone agent going forward.
Starting July 1, 2019, mobile-first indexing is enabled by default for all new websites (new to the web or previously unknown to Google Search). For older or existing websites, we continue to monitor and evaluate pages based on the best practices detailed in this guide. We inform site owners in Search Console of the date when their site was switched to mobile-first indexing.
To make sure that your users have the best experience, follow the best practices detailed in this guide.
Make sure that Googlebot can access and render your content
Make sure that Googlebot can access and render your mobile page content and resources.
- Use the same meta robots tags on the mobile and desktop site.
If you use a different meta robots tag on the mobile site (especially the
noindex
ornofollow
tags), Google may fail to crawl and index your page when your site is enabled for mobile-first indexing. - Don't lazy-load primary content upon user interaction. Googlebot won't load content that requires user interactions (for example, swiping, clicking, or typing) to load. Make sure that Google can see lazy-loaded content.
- Let Google crawl your resources. Some resources have different URLs on the
mobile site from those on the desktop site. If you want Google to crawl your URLs, make sure
that you're not blocking the URL with the
disallow
directive.
Make sure that content is the same on desktop and mobile
- Make sure that your mobile site contains the same content as your desktop site. If your mobile site has less content than your desktop site, consider updating your mobile site so that its primary content is equivalent to your desktop site. You can have a different design on mobile to maximize user experience (for example, moving content into accordions or tabs); just make sure that the content is equivalent to the desktop site, since almost all indexing on your site comes from the mobile site.
- Use the same clear and meaningful headings on the mobile site as you do on the desktop site.
Check your structured data
If you have structured data on your site, make sure that it's present on both versions of your site. Here are some specific things to check:
- Make sure that your mobile and desktop sites have the same structured data.
If you have to prioritize which types you add to your mobile site, start with
Breadcrumb
,Product
, andVideoObject
structured data. - Use correct URLs in structured data. Make sure that URLs in the structured data on the mobile versions are updated to the mobile URLs.
- If you use Data Highlighter, train it on your mobile site. If you use Data Highlighter to provide structured data, regularly check the Data Highlighter dashboard for extraction errors.
Put the same metadata on both versions of your site
Make sure that the descriptive title and meta description are equivalent across both versions of your site.
Check the placement of your ads
Don't let ads harm your mobile page ranking. Follow the Better Ads Standard when displaying ads on mobile devices. For example, ads at the top of the page can take up too much room on a mobile device, which is a bad user experience
Check visual content
Check your images
Make sure that the images on your mobile site follow the image best practices. In particular, we recommend that you:
- Provide high quality images. Don't use images that are too small or have a low resolution on the mobile site.
- Use a supported
format for images. Don't use unsupported formats or tags.
For example, Google supports SVG format images, but our systems can't index a .jpg image in
the
<image>
tag inside an inline SVG. - Don't use URLs that change every time the page loads for images. Google won't be able to process and index your resources properly if you use constantly-changing URLs for them.
- Make sure that the mobile site has the same alt text for images as the desktop site. Use descriptive alt text for images on your mobile site as you do on your desktop site.
- Make sure that the mobile page content quality is as good as the desktop page. Use the same descriptive titles, captions, filenames, and text relevant to the images on the mobile site as you do for the desktop site.
Check your videos
Make sure that the videos on your mobile site follow the video best practices. In particular, we recommend that you:
- Don't use URLs that change every time the page loads for your videos. Google won't be able to process and index your resources properly if you use constantly changing URLs for them.
- Use a supported format
for your videos and put videos in supported tags. Videos are identified in
the page by the presence of an HTML tag, for example:
<video>
,<embed>
, or<object>
. - Use the same video structured data on both your mobile site and desktop site. For more information, check your structured data.
- Place the video in an easy to find position on the page when viewed on a mobile device. For example, it might harm the video's ranking if users need to scroll down too much to find the video on mobile page.
Additional best practices for separate URLs
If your site has separate URLs for the desktop and mobile versions of a page (also known as m-dot), we recommend the following additional best practices:
- Make sure that the error page status is the same on both the desktop and mobile sites. If a page on your desktop site serves normal contents and your mobile site's version of that page serves an error page, this page will be missing from the index.
- Make sure that your mobile version doesn't have fragment URLs. The fragment
part of the URL is the end of the URL that starts with
#
. Most of the time, fragment URLs are not indexable, these pages will be missing from the index after your domain is enabled for mobile-first indexing. - Ensure that the desktop versions that serve different contents have equivalent mobile versions. If different URLs redirects to the same URL, for example, homepage, on mobile devices, after your domain is enabled for mobile-first indexing, all these pages will be missing from the index.
- Verify both versions of your site in Search Console to make sure that you have access to data and messages for both versions. Your site may experience a data shift when Google switches to mobile-first indexing for your site.
- Check hreflang links on separate URLs. When you use
rel=hreflang
link elements for internationalization, link between mobile and desktop URLs separately. Your mobile URLs' hreflang should point to mobile URLs, and similarly desktop URL hreflang should point to desktop URLs.Here's an example of hreflang for the homepage of a site with separate URLs for mobile and desktop.
Mobile
In this example, the mobile site URL is
https://m.example.com/
.<link rel="canonical" href="https://example.com/"> <link rel="alternate" hreflang="es" href="https://m.example.com/es/"> <link rel="alternate" hreflang="fr" href="https://m.example.com/fr/"> <link rel="alternate" hreflang="de" href="https://m.example.com/de/"> <link rel="alternate" hreflang="th" href="https://m.example.com/th/">
Desktop
In this example, the desktop site URL is
https://example.com/
.<link rel="canonical" href="https://example.com/"> <link rel="alternate" media="only screen and (max-width: 640px)" href="https://m.example.com/"> <link rel="alternate" hreflang="es" href="https://example.com/es/"> <link rel="alternate" hreflang="fr" href="https://example.com/fr/"> <link rel="alternate" hreflang="de" href="https://example.com/de/"> <link rel="alternate" hreflang="th" href="https://example.com/th/">
- Ensure that your mobile site has enough capacity to handle a potential increase in crawl rate on the mobile version of your site.
- Verify that your robots.txt directives work as you intend for both versions of your site. The robots.txt file lets you specify which parts of a website may be crawled or not. In most cases, use the same robots.txt directives for both mobile and desktop versions of your site.
- Use the correct
rel=canonical
andrel=alternate
link elements between your mobile and desktop versions.Here's an example of
rel=canonical
andrel=alternate
for a separate URLs site setup.Mobile
In this example, the mobile site URL is
https://m.example.com/
.<link rel="canonical" href="https://example.com/">
Desktop
In this example, the desktop site URL is
https://example.com/
.<link rel="canonical" href="https://example.com/"> <link rel="alternate" media="only screen and (max-width: 640px)" href="https://m.example.com/">
Troubleshooting
Here's a list of the most common errors that can stop sites from being enabled for mobile-first indexing or could cause a drop in ranking after a site is enabled for mobile-first indexing. If your site isn't enabled for mobile-first indexing yet, you've seen a drop in ranking after your site is enabled for mobile-first indexing, or you've received a message in Search Console, check the list of common errors and resolve possible errors you may have.
Errors | |
---|---|
Missing structured data |
error What caused the issue: The mobile page doesn't have all the structured
data markup that the desktop page has.
done Fix the issue
|
|
error What caused the issue: A mobile page
is blocked from indexing by a noindex tag.
done Fix the issue: Use the same meta robots
tags on the mobile site and the desktop site. Don't use the
|
Missing image |
error What caused the issue: The mobile page doesn't have all the important
images that the desktop page has.
done Fix the issue
|
Blocked image |
error What caused the issue: An important image on the mobile page is blocked
by robots.txt.
done Fix the issue: Let Google crawl your
resources. Some images have different URLs on the mobile site from those
on the desktop site. If you want Google to crawl your URLs, don't block the
URL with the |
Low quality image |
error What caused the issue: An important image on the mobile page is too small
or low resolution.
done Fix the issue: Provide high quality images. Don't use images that are too small or have a low resolution on the mobile site. |
Missing alt text |
error What caused the issue: An important image on the mobile page is missing
alt text.
done Fix the issue: Use the same descriptive alt text for images on your mobile site as you do on your desktop site. |
Missing page title |
error What caused the issue: A mobile page is missing a title.
done Fix the issue: Make sure that the titles and meta descriptions are equivalent across both versions of your site. |
Missing meta description |
error What caused the issue: A mobile page
is missing the meta description.
done Fix the issue: Make sure that the titles and meta descriptions are equivalent across both versions of your site. |
Mobile URL is an error page |
error What caused the issue: The mobile page is an error page.
done Fix the issue: Make sure error page status is the same across desktop and mobile site. If a page on your desktop site serves normal contents and your mobile site's version of that page serves an error page, this page will be missing from the index. |
Mobile URL has anchor fragment |
error What caused the issue: The mobile URL includes an anchor fragment; Google
can't index URLs that include fragments.
done Fix the issue: Make sure your mobile version doesn't have fragment URLs. Most of the time, fragment URLs are not indexable, and these pages will be missing from the index after your domain is enabled for mobile-first indexing. |
Mobile page blocked by robots.txt |
error What caused the issue: The mobile page is blocked by a robots.txt rule.
done Fix the issue: Verify that your robots.txt directives and robots meta tags work as you intended for both versions of your site. Use the same robots.txt directives for both mobile and desktop versions of your site. |
Duplicate mobile page target |
error What caused the issue: Multiple desktop pages redirect to the same mobile page.
done Fix the issue: Ensure desktop versions which serve different contents have equivalent mobile versions. If different URLs redirects to the same URL, on mobile devices, after your domain is enabled for mobile-first indexing, all these pages will be missing from the index. |
Desktop site redirects to the mobile homepage |
error What caused the issue: Most or all pages on your desktop site redirect to
the mobile site's homepage.
done Fix the issue: Ensure the desktop version has an equivalent mobile version. If different URLs redirect to the homepage on mobile devices, all these pages will be missing from the index after your domain is migrated for mobile-first indexing. |
Page quality issues |
error What caused the issue: The mobile page has issues with ads, missing
content, titles, or descriptive elements for images on the page.
done Fix the issue
|
Video issues |
error What caused the issue: The mobile page has a video that is not in a
supported format, is placed in a difficult to find location, is missing meta descriptions,
or is very slow to load.
done Fix the issue
|
Hostload issues |
error What caused the issue: Some of the
hosts don't have enough hostload.
done Fix the issue: Ensure that your mobile site has enough capacity to handle a potential increase in crawl rate on the mobile version of your site. |
Recent updates
We've announced a lot of updates around mobile-first indexing. Here's a log of everything we've announced on the Google Search Central blog:
Updates | |
---|---|
March 4, 2020 | Mobile-first indexing will be enabled for all websites starting September 2020. In the meantime, we'll continue moving sites to mobile-first indexing when our systems recognize that they're ready. |
May 28, 2019 | Mobile-first indexing is enabled by default for all new, previously unknown to Google Search, websites starting July 1, 2019. For older sites, we'll continue to monitor and evaluate pages for readiness, and will notify site owners through Search Console once they're ready. |
December 19, 2018 | We notify the site owner through Search Console when we move the site to mobile-first indexing. Prepare for mobile-first indexing by verifying that structured data and alt-attributes are on both versions of your pages. |
March 26, 2018 | Mobile-first indexing is rolling out more broadly. We published documentation on how to prepare for mobile-first indexing. Content gathered by mobile-first indexing has no ranking advantage over mobile content that's not yet gathered this way or desktop content. |
December 18, 2017 | We will be evaluating sites for readiness and cautiously rolling out mobile-first indexing for sites that are ready. |
November 4, 2016 | We are experimenting with making the index mobile-first. |