Mobile-Friendly Test
Ankit Agarwal · Head of Marketing
The Mobile-Friendly Test was a free Google tool that checked if a page worked on phones. Google retired it on December 1, 2023 and points users to Lighthouse.
What is Mobile-Friendly Test?
The Mobile-Friendly Test was a free Google Search tool that analysed a single URL and reported whether the page was usable on mobile devices, flagging issues such as text too small to read, clickable elements too close together and content wider than the screen. Google retired it, along with the Mobile Usability report and the test’s API, on December 1, 2023.
The tool launched in 2014 and became central to SEO audits around Google’s 2015 mobile-friendly ranking update. Many older guides and agency checklists still reference it, so it is worth knowing what replaced it.
If you inherit an old SEO audit or agency report, treat any “Mobile-Friendly Test: passed” line as historical. A page can have passed that test and still deliver a poor mobile experience by current standards, especially on Interaction to Next Paint, which replaced First Input Delay as a Core Web Vital in March 2024.
How it worked (and what to use now)
The test fetched the page with Googlebot Smartphone, rendered it and returned a pass or fail result, a screenshot and a list of loading issues and blocked resources. The replacements cover the same ground:
| Old check | Current alternative |
|---|---|
| Mobile usability pass/fail | Chrome Lighthouse (DevTools) or PageSpeed Insights |
| Rendered screenshot as Googlebot | Search Console URL Inspection, “View crawled page” |
| Site-wide mobile usability report | Core Web Vitals report plus a mobile-user-agent crawl |
| API for bulk testing | PageSpeed Insights API (Lighthouse) |
Examples
- For example, an agency’s monthly SEO report template still includes a “Mobile-Friendly Test: pass” line. Replacing it with Lighthouse mobile scores and Core Web Vitals field data gives clients a current, more useful view.
- A SaaS team that used the Mobile-Friendly Test API in CI switches to running Lighthouse CI on key templates for each deployment.
Best practices
- Update audit checklists and internal docs that still reference the retired tool.
- Combine lab data (Lighthouse) with field data (Core Web Vitals) because they can disagree.
- Use URL Inspection to confirm what Googlebot Smartphone actually renders, especially for JavaScript-heavy pages.
- Do a manual phone check on revenue pages; automated tools miss broken forms and awkward flows.
Common mistakes
- Linking to the retired tool in client deliverables or help docs.
- Treating a Lighthouse score as a ranking score. It is a diagnostic, not a Google ranking metric.
Related terms
- Mobile-Friendliness
- Mobile Usability
- Google PageSpeed Insights
- Google Search Console
- Core Web Vitals
Sources
- The Search Console mobile friendly testing tool (retired), Google Search Central Blog
- Google officially drops Mobile Usability report, Mobile-Friendly Test tool and API, Search Engine Land
- Lighthouse overview, Chrome for Developers
- Understanding page experience in Google Search results, Google Search Central
Frequently asked questions
Is Google's Mobile-Friendly Test still available?
No. Google retired the Mobile-Friendly Test tool, the Mobile-Friendly Test API and the Mobile Usability report in Search Console on December 1, 2023. Old links to search.google.com/test/mobile-friendly no longer run the test. Some third-party tools reuse the name, but they are not Google's test and do not reflect any Google signal.
What should I use instead of the Mobile-Friendly Test?
Google recommends Chrome Lighthouse, which runs in Chrome DevTools and powers PageSpeed Insights. For seeing how Googlebot Smartphone renders a page, use Search Console's URL Inspection tool. For real-user performance, use the Core Web Vitals report. Combine those with manual checks on real phones.
Why did Google retire the tool?
Google pointed to the many other resources now available for evaluating mobile usability, notably Chrome Lighthouse, which covers the same checks in more depth. With mobile-first indexing complete, a simple pass/fail mobile badge had also become less useful. Update old checklists accordingly.
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