Since 2024, Google uses only the mobile version of your site for indexing and ranking for all sites. Googlebot now crawls pages using a smartphone user-agent, and if your mobile experience differs significantly from your desktop version, the desktop content will not be used for ranking.

Why it matters: If your mobile site hides content behind "read more" expanders, loads fewer images, or defers key text, that hidden content receives less ranking weight. Responsive design that serves the same content on all screen sizes is the safest approach.

Quick tips:

Test with Google's Mobile-Friendly Test and Lighthouse mobile audit.
Ensure all critical content, structured data, and metadata present on desktop are also present on mobile.
Verify your robots.txt does not block Googlebot-Smartphone.