Google’s mobile indexing initiative started just seven and a half years ago, although we thought it was complete last October, it will now completely end after July 5th. “The small set of sites we’ve still been crawling with desktop Googlebot will be crawled with mobile Googlebot after July 5, 2024,” Google’s John Mueller wrote on the Google blog.
Mueller explained, “Most of the web is already crawled like this, and there is no change in crawling those sites.” However, “after July 5, 2024, we will crawl and index these sites only with Googlebot Smartphone,” he added.
Therefore, if your site is not accessible via a mobile device, Google will “no longer” index it and therefore rank it.
Mobile accessibility is required for Google indexing. You got it right, wrote Google’s John Mueller: “If your site’s content is not accessible at all on a mobile device, it will no longer be indexable.”
This has been going on for a long time and Google has finally drawn a line in the sand for sites that just don’t show up on the desktop.
This does not mean that if your site is not mobile friendly, Google will not index it. That’s not what Google says. Google says that if your site simply doesn’t display or load on mobile devices, Google won’t index it. If you only have a desktop template, that’s fine, assuming the desktop version loads on a mobile device.
A desktop crawl to continue. Google said that Google still sometimes uses the Googlebot desktop crawler for product listings and for Google for Jobs. This means you can still see Googlebot Desktop in your server logs and reporting tools.
Why we care For most of you, this is probably not a problem. But if someone hires you to do some SEO on their site and their site won’t load on your Android phone or iPhone, Google may not crawl or index it after July 5th either. Your goal will be to make sure your site is accessible on mobile devices and test it with the Google Search Console URL Inspection tool to make sure it renders.
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