Навчання
Mobile Usability: What Mobile-First Indexing Actually Means
Google indexes the mobile version of your site. Not primarily — exclusively. Anything present only on desktop is, for search purposes, not on your site.
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Mobile-first is not a preference
Google completed the move to mobile-first indexing for all sites, which means the mobile rendering of a page is the version crawled, indexed and ranked. The desktop version is not consulted.
The consequence is concrete: content hidden on mobile, a navigation that drops links on small screens, or structured data present only in the desktop template is invisible to search regardless of how complete the desktop site is.
The checks that matter
- Content parity — the mobile version contains the same text, images, links and structured data as desktop.
- A viewport meta tag, without which the browser assumes a desktop width and scales everything down.
- Legible text without zooming, which means around 16px body text rather than a scaled-down desktop size.
- Tap targets large enough and far enough apart to hit reliably.
- No horizontal scrolling caused by fixed-width elements.
- Interstitials that do not cover the content a searcher arrived for.
<!-- Correct -->
<meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1">
<!-- Wrong: blocks zoom, an accessibility failure -->
<meta name="viewport"
content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1,
maximum-scale=1, user-scalable=no">The Mobile-Friendly Test is gone
Google retired the standalone Mobile-Friendly Test and the Mobile Usability report in Search Console in late 2023, on the grounds that the mobile web had matured and the report mostly repeated what other tools said.
That removed the report, not the requirement. Mobile usability still determines what gets indexed; you now check it with Lighthouse, browser device emulation and real devices instead of a dedicated Google tool.
| Retired | Use instead |
|---|---|
| Mobile-Friendly Test | Lighthouse, or a real device |
| Mobile Usability report | Lighthouse accessibility and best-practice audits |
| Mobile-specific rich results test | The general Rich Results Test |
Where mobile sites actually lose
The accordion point matters because it is widely misunderstood. Content inside a collapsed accordion is indexed normally as long as it is in the HTML — Google confirmed this when mobile-first indexing rolled out. Content conditionally removed from the DOM is the actual problem. See image SEO for the sizing side.
- Interstitials and cookie banners covering the content on arrival — Google has said this can affect ranking.
- Accordions and tabs are fine; content genuinely removed from the DOM on mobile is not.
- Large images sent to small screens, which is usually the LCP failure on mobile.
- Touch targets in dense navigation, particularly footer links.
- Fixed-width tables and code blocks causing horizontal scroll.
How DomainLens contributes
DomainLens checks the viewport declaration, tap-target and font-size audits, and the mobile Core Web Vitals — which together cover what the retired Mobile Usability report used to report. See the Core Web Vitals guide for the metrics.
- What is mobile-first indexing?
- Google crawls and indexes the mobile version of your pages. The desktop version is not used, so anything present only on desktop is invisible to search.
- Is content in an accordion indexed?
- Yes, provided it is in the HTML. Google confirmed collapsed content is indexed normally. Content removed from the DOM on mobile is not.
- Why did the Mobile-Friendly Test disappear?
- Google retired it in 2023 as the mobile web matured. Use Lighthouse or a real device instead; the requirement itself has not changed.
- Do interstitials hurt rankings?
- Intrusive ones can. A banner covering the content a searcher arrived for is the case Google has named specifically.