Mobile-first indexing
Google's use of the mobile version of a site's content, crawled with its smartphone agent, to index and rank the site's pages.
Google indexes and ranks pages using the mobile version of a site’s content, crawled with its smartphone agent, and calls this mobile-first indexing (Google Search Central). In its words, “Only the content shown on the mobile site is used for indexing.”
You don’t need a mobile version of your pages to appear in Google’s results, though Google says it “is very strongly recommended.” It describes three ways to build a mobile-friendly site. Responsive design serves the same HTML at the same address and changes how the page displays by screen size. Dynamic serving keeps one address but sends different HTML to each device, and the third way puts each device’s version on a separate URL. Google recommends responsive design as the easiest to implement and maintain.
If your mobile pages differ from desktop
With responsive design, the content and metadata are the same on mobile and desktop, so Google’s further advice covers the other two setups:
- Give mobile pages the same content as desktop. If they have less, Google says to expect some traffic loss, and suggests moving content into accordions or tabs instead of removing it.
- Use the same robots meta tags on both. With
noindexon a mobile page, Google won’t index that page. - Keep the same structured data, title, meta description, headings and image alt text on both versions.
- Don’t make primary content load only when someone swipes, clicks or types: Google won’t load it.
If you use a CMS
If your site runs on a CMS such as Wix or Blogger and you can’t change your current theme, Google says you might need a new mobile-friendly one. It suggests searching for your CMS’s name with “mobile friendly”, as in “wix mobile friendly”.
Related terms
Tools for it
Sources
- https://developers.google.com/search/docs/crawling-indexing/mobile/mobile-sites-mobile-first-indexing (Oct 12, 2026)
Updated Oct 12, 2026.