Mobile-First Indexing

Mobile-First Indexing is Google’s method of prioritizing the mobile version of a website when crawling, indexing, and ranking pages in search results. Since 2021, mobile-first indexing has been the default for all websites, reflecting the dominance of mobile traffic as the primary way users access the internet.

With mobile-first indexing, Googlebot predominantly crawls the mobile version of content rather than the desktop version. This means the mobile site is considered the primary version for ranking, making it essential that all critical content, metadata, structured data, and functionality available on desktop are also present and fully accessible on mobile.

For AEO and AI-powered search, mobile-first indexing is especially significant because AI systems often rely on mobile-rendered versions of pages to analyze and cite information. If schema markup, internal linking, or core content is missing or stripped down on mobile, AI and search engines may misinterpret or ignore that information.

Mobile-first optimization involves ensuring responsive design, improving page speed on mobile, providing touch-friendly navigation, using readable fonts and spacing, compressing images and media for fast loading, and maintaining consistent content across desktop and mobile versions. SEO fundamentals—such as title tags, meta descriptions, schema markup, and internal linking—must be implemented consistently across both versions.