Mobile Version of the Website and SEO

Google announced a few alterations not too long ago that have a big influence on-site positions. Based on the new search engine position, this will not be determined anymore by the traditional web page users see on their desktop or computer. Instead, it is about the mobile version viewed on a mobile phone or tablet. 

This change has now happened and if you ever notice a bigger drop in your traffic than the usual drop, it is possibly because of the errors that your mobile site has. The majority of these errors don’t have any direct relationship to SEO parameters but are instead related to the site’s technical parameters. 

Technical reviews and settings are some of the tasks that your website maintenance team should do.

How do you know your mobile website works well?

In 2020 there were two free tools from Google for this.

Mobile-Friendly Testing Tool

Update 2026: Google retired the Mobile-Friendly Test on 1 December 2023. Use Lighthouse in Chrome or PageSpeed Insights instead.

Lighthouse, built into the Chrome browser

• Click on the menu.
• Click on More Tools.
• Click Developer Tools. 
• A window is going to pop up where you can choose the mobile version. 
• After choosing the mobile version, just click on Audit. 
• Select the Full Review option. 
• Get the report. 

Common mobile errors

• The menu’s second level doesn’t load in the site’s mobile version. 
• There is a full-screen confirmation of the cookies. This is also applicable to contact forms and ads. 
• The full version doesn’t load the whole footer particularly the part that contains business information that can greatly affect the results of the local hits. 
• Not every JavaScript script gets loaded in the site’s mobile version.
• Not all the images get to upload in the site’s mobile version. 
• SSL certificates are not uploaded to the mobile version of the website. 
• The text is too small to read in the mobile version. 
• Many tested pages are slower in mobile versions compared to the desktop versions. This may result in significant drops in search positions. In 2020 we recommended AMP pages to speed up mobile websites (amp.dev); today we recommend improving Core Web Vitals on the main site instead.

Updated October 2026: Google now uses mobile-first indexing for all websites, so the mobile version of your site is the one Google evaluates.