Google Mobile First Indexing and Scoring of Sites with Mobile and AMP Versions

Google’s John Mueller explained how Google’s Mobile First Index will index and score sites that have Desktop, Mobile and AMP versions

Web Vitals are metrics that will become ranking factors in 2021, so knowing which version of a site Google will use for indexing and user experience scoring is important.

Mueller answered that question and then went into detail about how Google will index and score sites that have a mobile, AMP and desktop version.

Mueller began by stating that for indexing purposes, Google will use a mobile version of a site if both a mobile and AMP version co-exist.

Then Mueller said that Google will use the AMP version of a site for indexing where there is no mobile version of a website and only an AMP version.

“The other thing that kind of plays into this complex scenario of mobile, desktop and AMP is that when it comes to the page experience score, kind of the Core Web Vitals, where we’re testing the speed and stability and usability of a web page, we will test the version that users end up seeing.

And we would show the desktop version in the search results as an alternate URL when people on desktop are searching.”

There are many sites that have three versions, mobile, AMP and desktop. Google has revealed that sites created with both a mobile and AMP version will have their mobile version crawled for indexing and the AMP version used for Web Vitals scoring.

Google will then use the AMP version for user experience ranking factors represented by the Web Vitals metrics.

And the desktop version will be shown as an alternate URL for those on a desktop device.