Google: Slow Pages Might Be Labeled As Not Mobile Friendly

Dec 28, 2016 - 8:41 am 9 by

google pagespeed

In the hangout from yesterday with Google's John Mueller he said something I never knew before, that pages that load really slowly may be considered NOT mobile friendly.

He said at the 21:39 mark into the video:

There's one aspect there that does sometimes play a role there in that if you look at things like PageSpeed insights. That we will put together a mobile score for page and if website is technically mobile-friendly in that the UI kind of works on mobile but it really has really bad PageSpeed insights scores then that's something where we might also think that this probably isn't a good mobile page.

Here is the video embed:

Why does this somewhat surprise me? Google has told us that for page speed, they only look at desktop page speed and thus, why in the world would they use that speed for mobile-friendlyness? At least look at the mobile page speed if you are going to use it against the site being mobile-friendly?

What is interesting is that John Mueller said my page speed for the not mobile friendly label I got yesterday was likely the cause:

But the page speed is over 50 for me and others. Plus we have native iOS and Android apps and we are AMP enabled. So shouldn't the mobile friendly work off AMP, since Google serves that page to mobile users?

So the key here is that really slow pages may trigger a page to be not mobile friendly by Google.

Forum discussion at Google+.

 

Popular Categories

The Pulse of the search community

Search Video Recaps

 
Video Details More Videos Subscribe to Videos

Most Recent Articles

Search Forum Recap

Daily Search Forum Recap: August 15, 2025

Aug 15, 2025 - 10:00 am
Search Video Recaps

Search News Buzz Video Recap: Google Volatility Continues, Preferred Sources, Site Hack Demolishes Traffic & Google On AI

Aug 15, 2025 - 8:01 am
Google

Chartbeat: Traffic From Google To Publishers Stable Over Years

Aug 15, 2025 - 7:51 am
Search Engine Optimization

Google's John Mueller Suggests AI SEO Acronyms May Lead To Scams & Spam

Aug 15, 2025 - 7:41 am
Google

Google Search Age Verification: Asking To Confirm You're An Adult

Aug 15, 2025 - 7:31 am
Google

Google Looking Into Adding Analytics For Preferred Sources

Aug 15, 2025 - 7:21 am
Previous Story: Google: CDNs Are Safe & Shouldn't Hurt Your Rankings