Every New Site Is Mobile-First From July

What Google announced yesterday

Google said yesterday that from July 1, every new website it discovers will be indexed using its mobile version by default.

Mobile-first indexing means Google reads the phone version of a page to decide what the page contains and where it should rank. Desktop visitors still see the desktop page; it is Google's reading that changes.

Established sites have been moved over gradually since early last year, site by site, with a message in Search Console when it happens.

What changes on July 1 is the starting point. A site Google has never seen before will be read from its phone version from the first day.

What it does not mean

It is not a reward for being mobile-friendly, which is a separate matter. It is not a separate index for phones. And existing sites are not switched on July 1; they keep moving over when Google judges them ready.

For a site that shows the same content on every screen, as most modern responsive sites do, it changes very little.

The sites it affects are those where the phone version is a lesser copy of the desktop one. Some of those are about to launch.

Where phone versions fall short

The gaps tend to be the same few.

• Text trimmed from the phone layout to save space.
• Structured data left out of the version sent to phones.
• Images swapped for different files without alt text.
• Links missing from a cut-down phone menu.
• Content that loads only when somebody taps or swipes.
• A separate mobile theme serving phones a simpler site.

The fifth is the one modern sites miss. Text already in the page but folded behind a heading is fine; text fetched only after a tap is not, because Google does not tap.

Structured data and images

Structured data is code that describes a page to search engines in a fixed format: the business's name and hours, an event's date, a product's price, a set of questions and answers.

On sites that send phones a different version, it is often missing from the phone one. Under mobile-first indexing, markup missing from the phone version is markup Google does not see.

Images work the same way. The phone version needs the same images, at a usable size, with the same alt text, the short description that tells Google and screen readers what each image shows.

Responsive sites and the others

A responsive site sends every device the same page and lets the layout adjust. Its content is the same everywhere by design, which is why most are already fine.

The trouble lies with older approaches: a separate mobile site at its own address, or a plugin that serves phones a simplified theme. Both were sensible once, and both tend to carry less than the desktop site.

A responsive site can still go wrong where a section is built to load only on larger screens. That is a design decision worth reversing before launch.

A worked example

A new axe-throwing venue is opening in a converted warehouse in July, and its website is nearly finished on a private staging address.

On a laptop, the booking page shows a full price table for walk-in lanes, private parties and league nights. On a phone, the table had been replaced by a See prices button that fetched it when tapped.

The theme also sent phones a shorter menu with four links, leaving out the parties and leagues pages entirely.

The owner had asked whether to rush the launch into June, to get in before the change. The answer was that the date mattered far less than the phone version being complete.

The price table now sits in the page itself, folded under a heading that opens without fetching anything, and the phone menu carries every page. The launch stays in July.

Launching before or after July 1

There is no advantage in hurrying. A site launched in June will be read the older way at first, then moved over later, as established sites have been.

Nor is there a reason to delay. A site whose phone version carries everything gains nothing from waiting and loses nothing from the change.

The date only changes how Google starts reading a new site. The work is the same either way: make the phone version complete.

Put it in the brief

For a site still being built, the cheapest moment to settle this is now, while changing a template costs an hour rather than a rebuild.

Ask whoever is building it to confirm that phones get the same text, images, links and structured data as laptops, and that nothing important waits for a tap.

Then make it part of the sign-off. No page is approved until somebody has checked it on a phone.

Checking before launch

Google's Mobile-Friendly Test loads a page the way Google's phone crawler does, and shows a screenshot along with the code it ended up with. Search that code for a sentence from the desktop page.

A staging site behind a password cannot be tested this way, so plan to test the live address on launch day, one page of each type.

After launch, the URL Inspection tool in Search Console shows how Google last crawled a page, including whether it used its phone crawler.

Since this month, Google's crawler itself renders pages with a current version of Chrome, so a page built with modern code is read much as a phone displays it.

The counter-case

Most sites have nothing to do.

An established site is not affected by this announcement, and a responsive site with the same content on every screen will be indexed much as before, whenever it launches.

Some differences are legitimate: a wide table can become a list on a phone, and a gallery can show fewer images per row. The information stays; only its presentation changes.

For anyone launching this summer with a phone version that carries less: make it carry everything before the site goes live.

Before launch

1. Compare each page type on phone and laptop.
2. Restore any text trimmed from the phone version.
3. Check the structured data on phones too.
4. Give every image the same alt text.
5. Load key content without needing a tap.
6. Run the Mobile-Friendly Test on launch day.
7. Check URL Inspection a week later.

Step five is the one most likely to be missed, because the page looks complete to anybody who taps. Google does not tap, so it reads the page as it was before the tap.

How Google renders the phone version it now reads first is covered in Googlebot now sees pages like current Chrome.

Frequently asked questions

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