Google Search Console Bug Mistakenly Categorises Mobile Sites As Desktop Sites

A bug in Google Search Console is reporting websites that have been indexed with mobile indexing as indexed using desktop indexing. This news comes after Google finishes its last batch of mobile-first indexing in May 2023. The sites with mobile-friendly UI are reported as being crawled using desktop indexing when they should be reported using the mobile crawler. There is not much to worry about in this situation as it is an issue on Google’s side and will not affect the website’s mobile friendliness and overall search engine performance.

John Mueller, a senior search analyst, and search relations team lead at Google, said, “It looks like we’re also showing the wrong mobile indexing status for some sites in Search Console, which is a reporting issue on our side (and also not related to mobile friendliness). I’m happy to check, but my assumption is your site is already in mobile first indexing.”

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Mobile friendliness is an important factor for a website’s search engine ranking, so you should keep a close eye on the Google Search Console to stay updated on current trends and issues.

Here’s how you can check your indexing status,

Login to Google Search Console with your account credentials and click on the “Settings” link on the left sidebar. You will see an “About” section there, look under the About section to confirm your site’s indexing status.

If your mobile-friendly site has been indexed using Google’s mobile crawler, it will show Googlebot Smartphone beside the indexing crawler. However, if it is indexed using a desktop crawler it will show Google Desktop.

If you notice your mobile site is indexed using the desktop crawler, there is absolutely no need to worry. You can simply check it once again after a week’s time to see if it has changed. The error is a bug on the Google Search Console’s part and Google is trying to fix the bug as soon as possible.