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What Google's mobile-first indexing means for your site
This page is for the owner of a local business site that looks fine on a desktop and has never been checked on a phone. After reading it you will be able to see the version of your site that Google actually reads.
In one paragraph
Mobile-first indexing means Google reads and ranks the phone version of your site and ignores the desktop version, and since July 2024 that applies to every site. Anything that is hidden, shortened or removed on the phone version does not exist as far as Google is concerned, including text tucked into accordions that never open, galleries that load only on desktop and menu links that the phone menu drops. For a local business the check is simple: open every important page on a phone, and whatever you cannot read there is what Google cannot read either.
What mobile-first indexing is
Google crawls sites with two versions of its crawler, one that behaves like a desktop browser and one that behaves like a phone. For most of Google’s history the desktop crawler did the reading and the phone was an afterthought. That flipped over several years, and in July 2024 Google finished moving every site to the phone crawler.
In practice this means Google’s copy of your page is the phone copy. The words it indexes are the words a phone shows. The links it follows are the links a phone menu contains. The photos it reads alt text from are the photos the phone loads. If your site is built so that the phone version is a trimmed-down cousin of the desktop version, Google is ranking the cousin.
Most modern themes show the same content on both screens and simply rearrange it. The trouble comes from sites patched for phones by hiding things, and from page builders where a section was set to appear on desktop only.
What a desktop-only site looks like on a cabinet shop site
Magic Valley Custom Cabinets in Twin Falls builds kitchens that quote around $18,000 and gets almost all of its inquiries through a form on the site, and about seven in ten of those visitors arrive on a phone. The site was designed on a large monitor and looks excellent there. Each service page has a wide two-column layout with a 500-word description on the left and a photo gallery on the right.
On a phone the theme stacks the columns, and to keep the page from looking endless the builder set the description column to hide below 768 pixels wide and replaced it with a two-sentence summary. The gallery, which carries 40 photos with written alt text describing each kitchen, was set to desktop only because it loaded slowly on phones. The menu on the phone shows Home, Gallery and Contact, while the desktop menu also lists Kitchens, Bathrooms, Closets and Commercial.
So the phone version of the kitchens page, which is the version Google indexes, has two sentences of text, no photos and no link from the menu. A competitor in Jerome with a plainer site that shows the same text on every screen outranks the shop for custom cabinets Twin Falls, and on the owner’s monitor his page is clearly better.
A worked example: showing Google the whole cabinet shop site in Twin Falls
The kitchens page was checked with the URL inspection tool in Search Console, which renders the page the way the phone crawler sees it and shows the HTML it kept. The table compares what the desktop browser showed with what Google indexed.
| Element on the kitchens page | Desktop version | Phone version Google indexed, before | Phone version, after |
|---|---|---|---|
| Words of body text | 512 | 38 | 512 |
| Photos with alt text | 40 | 0 | 40, loaded as the visitor scrolls |
| Menu links | 7 | 3 | 7 |
| Internal links in body text | 6 | 0 | 6 |
| Headings | 5 | 1 | 5 |
| Page weight on phone | n/a | 1.1 MB | 1.4 MB |
The fix was not a redesign. The description column was set to show on every screen size and the two-sentence summary was removed. The gallery was switched to load each photo as the visitor scrolls to it, which is a setting in the page builder, so the phone page still opens fast but the photos and their alt text are in the HTML. The phone menu was set to use the same seven links as the desktop menu, with the four service pages under a Services heading so the list stays short.
Page weight went up slightly and the page still passes Core Web Vitals. The text a customer reads on a phone is now the same text Google reads.
The phone summary before, and the opening of the full description after.
We build custom kitchen cabinets to fit your home. Contact us for a quote.
We build custom kitchen cabinets in our shop in Twin Falls, with inset or overlay doors, soft-close hardware and finishes matched to your sample. Most kitchens we quote come in around $18,000 installed, and the timeline from measure to install runs six to eight weeks.
How to check your own site the way Google's mobile crawler does
- Open Google Search Console, paste the address of your busiest service page into the search bar at the top and run URL inspection. Click View crawled page. The HTML tab shows the exact text Google kept, and the Screenshot tab shows the page as the phone crawler rendered it. Search the HTML for a sentence from the middle of your page. If it is not there, it is not indexed.
- Open the same page on your own phone and read it top to bottom. Note anything that is on the desktop version and missing here, including menu items.
- In your page builder, look for any section with a setting that reads hide on mobile or show on desktop only. Each one is content Google will not see.
- Check the phone menu. Every page you want to rank should be reachable from it.
A page that loads its text on the phone but loads it slowly has a different problem, and the page speed page covers that. Photos that appear on the phone but carry no description are covered under alt text.
What we do about mobile-first indexing
You will get a page-by-page comparison of what your desktop site shows and what Google’s phone crawler actually indexed, with every hidden section, dropped menu link and desktop-only gallery listed. Each one is changed so the phone version carries the full text and links, using settings that keep the page fast rather than by rebuilding it. The pages are then reinspected in Search Console so you can see the indexed copy contains everything. This comparison is part of every site audit, which is where the work begins.
Questions people ask about SEO: what Google's mobile-first indexing means for your site
What is mobile-first indexing?
Mobile-first indexing means Google uses the phone version of your site as the version it reads and ranks, rather than the desktop version. Since July 2024 it applies to every site. Content that appears only on the desktop version is not indexed.
Does hiding content on mobile hurt SEO?
Yes, content hidden on the phone version of a page is not indexed, because Google reads the phone version. Text inside a collapsed accordion that is still in the page's HTML is fine. Text that is removed from the phone layout, or a section set to desktop only, is invisible to Google.
How do I see my website the way Google sees it?
Use the URL inspection tool in Google Search Console, paste in a page address and click View crawled page, which shows the HTML and a screenshot from Google's phone crawler. That is the copy Google ranks. For a quick look without Search Console, open the page on your own phone.
Do I need a separate mobile website?
No, a single site that rearranges itself for the screen size is what Google recommends and what nearly every modern theme does. A separate mobile site at an m. address creates two copies of every page and doubles the work of keeping them in step. If you have one, the fix is to merge it into the main site with redirects.
Is my website mobile friendly?
Your site is mobile friendly if the text is readable without zooming, the buttons are large enough to tap, nothing runs off the edge of the screen and the page passes Core Web Vitals on a phone. Google retired its separate mobile-friendly test in 2023, so check with PageSpeed Insights on the mobile setting and with your own phone.
This page is part of the The SEO guide for local businesses. The other guides: SEO, AEO, GEO.
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