Check that a site's mobile version is complete and read Core Web Vitals reports sensibly.
Google judges your site mainly by what it finds on a phone. If a section shows on your desktop page but not on the mobile page, Google may never see it, so check your important pages on a phone first, then look at speed and stability.
Google indexes and ranks pages using the mobile version of their content. This is called mobile-first indexing. Googlebot, the program Google uses to crawl the web, crawls mostly as a smartphone, and whatever it sees on mobile is what goes into the index.
Priya runs a tuition centre and edits its website on a laptop at the centre. On the laptop's big screen, her P5 page has a neat table of class times, a map and a section of parent reviews. One evening she opens the same page on her phone while queuing at a kopitiam. On the phone, the table is squashed into an unreadable strip and the map takes several seconds to load. The reviews section is missing because her theme hides it on small screens, and because Google indexes the mobile version, those reviews may as well not exist for search purposes.
Content can go missing on mobile in a few common ways. The theme may hide sections on small screens. Text in tabs may never load on mobile. Images may be left out of the mobile layout, or structured data may only appear on desktop. A responsive theme rearranges the same page to fit the screen, so the content usually stays the same on both, and most modern themes are responsive. The risk comes from themes or settings that hide sections on mobile to keep pages short.
To check, open each important page on a phone. Confirm that the main text, headings, images with alt text, links and structured data are all there, the same as on desktop. Then look for any sections your theme or settings hide on mobile.
While you have the phone out, check that your site uses HTTPS, the secure version of a web address, which is also part of page experience. The address should start with https, and the browser should show a padlock and no security warning. Most website builders provide HTTPS free and switch it on automatically, so on most sites this check takes a few seconds.
Core Web Vitals are Google's measures of real-world user experience. They cover three things: loading, responsiveness and visual stability.
Largest Contentful Paint (LCP) measures loading. It is how long the largest image or block of text in the first screen takes to appear. Interaction to Next Paint (INP) measures responsiveness, which is how quickly the page reacts when someone taps a button or opens a menu. Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS) measures visual stability, which is how much things jump around while the page loads, for example when a button moves just as you tap it because an image above it has finished loading.
Where possible, the figures come from real visitors using Chrome, collected in the Chrome User Experience Report. Google calls this field data. Tools can also run a simulated test, called lab data, which helps you diagnose problems but does not reflect real visitors in the same way. A small site with few visitors may not have enough field data, and then you only see lab results.
Google publishes thresholds that rate each measure as good, needs improvement or poor. These thresholds have changed before, so look up the current figures on web.dev rather than trusting a number you read somewhere else.
Google says its core ranking systems reward content that gives a good page experience. It also says relevance comes first. A page with great content can still rank well with a weaker page experience, and a perfect score does not lift an irrelevant page to the top.
Use Core Web Vitals as a check for real problems that annoy visitors rather than a target to chase to 100. Fix slow loading that makes people leave, and layout jumps that make them tap the wrong button, because those problems lose you customers whatever effect they have on ranking. If your scores are already in the good range, more work on them usually gives you less than better content or links would.
PageSpeed Insights is a free Google tool. Open it, enter a page address and choose the mobile setting. It shows field data from real users if there is enough, plus a lab test of the page on a simulated mobile device. Read the field data when it is there, and the lab test from the simulated device when it is not.
Below the scores is a list of specific issues and what each one relates to. Typical items are images larger than needed, too much code loading before the page appears, and elements without set dimensions that cause layout shift. Write down the top two issues for each page you test.
Then sort the fixes into two groups. You can do some yourself, such as compressing an oversized photo or moving an embedded map further down the page. Others, such as changing how the theme loads its code, may need a developer, so note those down for a developer rather than trying them yourself.
Priya tests her P5 page in PageSpeed Insights on mobile. The two biggest issues are a very large photo at the top, uploaded straight from her camera, and an embedded map that loads before anything else. She can fix both herself by compressing the photo and loading the map further down the page.
Search Console also has a Core Web Vitals report that groups your pages by status using field data. It becomes useful once your site has enough visitors to produce that field data.
For now, run your homepage and one priority page through PageSpeed Insights on the mobile setting, and write down the top two issues for each, as the activity below describes.
Run your homepage and one priority page through PageSpeed Insights on mobile. For each page, write down the top two issues it reports.
Junxiong-WFG Organisation is an authorised representative of AIA Financial Advisers Private Limited (Reg. No. 201715016G).