Why mobile-friendliness matters more than ever
Google now crawls and ranks the web using its smartphone crawler. What Google sees is the mobile version of your page, so a page that is awkward on a phone is judged on that version, even for people searching on a desktop.
Most traffic to most websites is now mobile, and people leave quickly when they have to pinch, zoom and scroll sideways. Getting the basics right is one of the cheapest improvements you can make.
What happened to Google's Mobile-Friendly Test?
Google retired its standalone Mobile-Friendly Test tool and the Mobile Usability report in Search Console in December 2023. It now points people to Lighthouse, which is powerful but hard to read if you just want to know whether a page works on a phone.
This test checks the same fundamentals in plain English: the viewport tag, zoom settings, responsive layout signals and the common causes of sideways scrolling. For a full performance measurement on a simulated phone, use our website speed test.
The most common fixes
- Add <meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1"> to the <head>.
- Remove maximum-scale=1 and user-scalable=no. Blocking zoom fails accessibility guidelines.
- Replace fixed pixel widths with max-width: 100% or relative units.
- Use at least 16px for body text.
- Wrap wide tables in a container with overflow-x: auto.