Let’s face it:
The world has gone mobile.
Since 2015, Google has received more daily searches on mobile than desktop.
That’s why in 2018 Google made a big change in how they do things:
They became a mobile-first platform.
Which is why the first test we’re going to run will look to see if your site is mobile-friendly.
What Is The Mobile-First Index?
Google’s mobile-first index means they will rank your desktop site based on its mobile performance.
Why?
Because the majority of their users are on mobile.
And they want to ensure they’re delivering:
- Great content
- To the most people
- On their chosen device
Think of it this way:
If your site works on mobile and is rapid fast, it’s likely to be even better on a desktop.
So mobile-friendly sites will get a boost over non-mobile friendly ones.
How Can You Tell If This Is Impacting Your Site Right Now?
If you set up Google Search Console a while ago you should have received an email about it.
Head to your inbox and search:
from:@google.com “Mobile-First indexing enabled”
And you should see an email like this one:
If it’s there you’re already being ranked on a mobile-first basis.
You can also check by logging into Google Search Console and clicking Settings on the left.
If you see this:
That means your site has already being moved over to mobile first indexing because Google is crawling your site with the “Googlebot Smartphone” crawler.
You can also see that this switch happened on August 22nd 2018.
And even if your site isn’t using mobile first indexing yet, it is going to be in the near future so it’s better to prepare for it now!
How To Run The Google Mobile-Friendly Test
You can run live tests of your pages by using the free Google Mobile-Friendly tool.
Enter your homepage URL:
Click “Run Test”.
This will analyse the page and give you a pass/fail verdict:
Take the data for your page and add it to tab #2 in your Google Sheet:
Be sure to add the link to the test result for future reference too.
Repeat this for your 5x URLs:
You can see my site passed but has some issues I need to fix!
Final Thoughts…
Don’t worry about trying to fix anything yet.
Right now we’re just doing some basic testing to find live issues that have right now.
In later lessons, we’ll look at how to solve all the problems we find at once.
Next let’s look at Google page speed scores…