A website for mobile: what Google requires and what to check

Is your site fine on phones? For Google, the mobile version is no longer an extra: it is the version that gets crawled, indexed and ranked. If the mobile pages are thinner, slower or harder to use than the desktop ones, that is what Google sees.

The good news is that the requirements are clear and most of them can be checked in about 15 minutes with free tools. Below is what Google checks today and a checklist you can run yourself.

Mobile-first indexing is finished, not coming

The old warnings of 2015 (“Google will punish sites that are not mobile-friendly”) are history. On 31 October 2023 Google announced that the move to mobile-first indexing is complete. Google now primarily indexes the mobile version of each page. Only a very small set of sites that do not work on phones at all are still crawled by the old desktop Googlebot, and Google said it would keep reducing that crawling.

In practice this means one thing for a business owner: the mobile version must be as complete as the desktop one.

What must be the same on mobile and desktop

Google’s mobile-first indexing guidelines list what has to match. If your theme hides blocks on phones, check carefully:

• Main content. The same text and sections. Accordions and tabs are fine, but content that is simply removed on mobile is lost for Google, and Google warns this can cost traffic.
• Headings and image alt text. The same clear headings and descriptive alt text.
• Title and meta description. Equivalent on both versions.
• Structured data. The same markup (for example Breadcrumb, Product, VideoObject) on mobile as on desktop.
• Robots meta tags. The same rules. A stray noindex on the mobile template can drop pages from the index.
• Images and video. Good quality, supported formats, ideally the same image URLs on both versions.
• Lazy loading. Primary content must not appear only after a swipe, click or typing, because Google will not trigger those actions.
• Resources. Do not block CSS, JavaScript or images in robots.txt that the mobile page needs.

A responsive site (one URL, layout adapts to the screen) avoids most of these problems by design.

Core Web Vitals: the three numbers that matter

Core Web Vitals measure how a page feels to real visitors. The current set and thresholds, from web.dev, are:

Metric	What it measures	Good	Poor
LCP (Largest Contentful Paint)	How fast the main content appears	2.5 s or less	over 4.0 s
INP (Interaction to Next Paint)	How quickly the page reacts to taps and clicks	200 ms or less	over 500 ms
CLS (Cumulative Layout Shift)	How much the layout jumps while loading	0.1 or less	over 0.25

Values in between are “needs improvement”. INP replaced First Input Delay (FID) on 12 March 2024, so any report or agency that still talks about FID is out of date.

Two details are often missed. First, Google looks at the 75th percentile of real visits, split by mobile and desktop: a page passes only if three out of four visits are in the “good” range for all three metrics. Second, most sites fail on phones, not desktops.

How much does page experience affect rankings?

Less than many sales pitches suggest. Google’s page experience guidance says there is no single “page experience” signal; its core ranking systems look at a range of signals. Core Web Vitals are used by those systems, and Google recommends good scores, but warns against chasing a perfect score only for SEO. Other aspects, such as HTTPS, mobile usability, intrusive interstitials and ad density, are part of a good experience but do not directly lift rankings.

Google is also explicit that relevance comes first: it will show the most relevant content even if its page experience is weak. A fast but thin page will not beat a useful one. Speed matters most when many pages answer the query equally well, and, just as importantly, it affects whether visitors stay and contact you.

Pop-ups and interstitials

Google advises against intrusive interstitials and dialogs: full-screen overlays that cover the content, redirects to a separate page for consent, and large promo windows for app installs or newsletters. Use small banners instead. Legally required notices and age verification are exempt. A pop-up that is minor on desktop can cover the whole phone screen.

The Mobile-Friendly Test is gone: what to use instead

In April 2023 Google announced the retirement of the Mobile-Friendly Test, its API and the Mobile Usability report in Search Console, pointing to Lighthouse from Chrome instead. They were switched off on 1 December 2023. Today the practical toolkit is:

• PageSpeed Insights (pagespeed.web.dev). It shows real-user data from the last 28 days where Google has enough of it, plus a Lighthouse lab test that simulates a mid-range phone on a mobile network.
• Search Console, Core Web Vitals report. Real-user data grouped by similar pages, separately for mobile and desktop. Small sites may see “no data” if traffic is too low.
• Lighthouse and Chrome DevTools. Built into Chrome, with device emulation for a quick look at different screen sizes.
• A real phone. No tool replaces tapping through your own site on mobile data.

Note that Lighthouse 13 (October 2025) removed the old font-size audit and moved the viewport check into a new performance insight, so older guides describing those audits no longer match what you see.

Basic mobile hygiene

• Viewport tag. The page head should contain <meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1">. Without it, phones render the desktop layout and shrink it.
• Tap targets. Buttons and links should be at least about 48 × 48 px with roughly 8 px between them, as web.dev recommends. That is about the size of a fingertip.
• Readable text. Lighthouse no longer scores font size for SEO, but small text is still a usability problem. The old Lighthouse rule (most text at 12 px or larger) is a bare minimum.
• Images. Google Search supports WebP and AVIF as well as JPEG and PNG. Use responsive images (srcset or <picture>) with a normal src fallback, so phones do not download desktop-size photos.

Why this matters in the UAE

According to DataReportal’s Digital 2026 report for the UAE, there were 11.3 million internet users at the end of 2025 (99% of the population, the report’s cap) and 23.0 million active cellular mobile connections, equal to 202% of the population. For most of your clients, the first contact with your company will be on a phone, often from a search or a WhatsApp link.

What to check: 15 minutes on your site

1. PageSpeed Insights (3 min). Test the home page and one key service page on the Mobile tab. Look first at the real-user block: does it pass the Core Web Vitals assessment? Then note the top issues in the lab report.
2. Search Console (2 min). Open Experience → Core Web Vitals → Mobile. How many URLs are Poor or Need improvement, and for which metric?
3. Real phone, mobile data (4 min). Switch off Wi-Fi. Open the site from a Google search. Does the main content appear quickly? Does anything jump while loading? Can you read text without zooming?
4. Forms (2 min). Fill in the contact form on the phone. Does the right keyboard appear for phone and email fields? Is the submit button easy to hit? Does a confirmation appear?
5. WhatsApp and phone buttons (1 min). Tap them. The call button should open the dialler with the correct +971 number; the WhatsApp link should open a chat, not an error page.
6. Content parity (1 min). Compare a service page on phone and desktop. Is any text, price table, FAQ or review block hidden on mobile?
7. Images and fonts (1 min). In the PageSpeed report, look for large images, images not in WebP/AVIF, and web fonts that delay text.
8. Pop-ups (1 min). Does any chat widget, cookie bar or promo window cover the content on a small screen? Can it be closed easily?

If steps 1–3 look fine and the buttons work, your site is in decent shape. If the real-user data fails on mobile, the cause is usually heavy images, too many scripts and plugins, or slow hosting.

How we can help

We can run this check for you, explain the results in plain terms and fix the main issues as part of website optimisation. If the site is too old to fix economically, we can build a fast responsive one through our website development team, and keep it in shape with website support. To discuss your site, get in touch.

Sources: Google Search Central: Mobile-first indexing has landed – thanks for all your support
Google Search Central: Mobile-first Indexing Best Practices
Google Search Central: Understanding Google Page Experience
Google Search Central: Interstitials and dialogs
Google Search Central: The role of page experience in creating helpful content
web.dev: Web Vitals
web.dev: Interaction to Next Paint becomes a Core Web Vital on March 12
Search Console Help: Core Web Vitals report
Google for Developers: About PageSpeed Insights
Chrome for Developers: What’s new in Lighthouse 13
Google Search Central: Image SEO Best Practices
web.dev: Accessible tap targets
DataReportal: Digital 2026: The United Arab Emirates