Google to Stop Indexing Sites Not Working on Mobile After July 5

Google's mobile-first indexing initiative, which began in 2016, was thought to be complete as of last October, but it won't be fully finalized until after July 5.

John Mueller from Google announced on the Google blog, "The small set of sites we’ve still been crawling with desktop Googlebot will be crawled with mobile Googlebot after July 5, 2024."

Mueller clarified:

"The largest part of the web is already being crawled like this, and there is no change in crawling for these sites." However, "after July 5, 2024, we’ll crawl and index these sites with only Googlebot Smartphone." Therefore, if your site is not accessible on a mobile device, Google "will no longer" index it, which means it won't rank.

Mobile accessibility is now a requirement for Google indexing. Mueller stated, "If your site’s content is not accessible with a mobile device, it will no longer be indexable."

The long-anticipated move by Google has finally been made, with the establishment of a firm deadline for sites that do not render on mobile devices. It's important to note that this doesn't mean Google won’t index your site if it isn’t mobile-friendly. What Google is saying is that if your site does not render or load on mobile devices, then Google won’t index it.

If your site has only a desktop template, it is acceptable, provided the desktop version loads on a mobile device.

Some desktop crawling will continue. Google mentioned that the Googlebot Desktop crawler will still be used for product listings and Google for Jobs, meaning you might still see Googlebot Desktop in your server logs and reporting tools.

It's important to note the following: For the majority of users, this change likely won't cause problems. However, if you are responsible for optimizing a website for search engines and it doesn't load on mobile devices, there's a possibility that Google won't be able to crawl and index it after July 5. Your main objective should be to make sure the website is easily accessible on mobile devices and to verify this using the Google Search Console URL Inspection tool to ensure proper rendering.