Google to stop using desktop Googlebot after 5 July 2024

Google has announced in a post on the Developers blog that after 5 July it will no longer use the desktop Googlebot agent to crawl any sites that are readable on desktop only which still remain in its index.

That means that henceforth, such sites - that are crawlable only by desktop Googlebot and usable only on desktop - will no longer be crawled or ranked by Google.

In Google's words:

“After July 5, 2024, we'll crawl and index these sites with only Googlebot Smartphone. If your site's content is not accessible at all with a mobile device, it will no longer be indexable.”

Google’s John Mueller - whose tweets suggest that Google is aware that affected sites face a permanent loss of ranking - said the company is evaluating how desktop-only sites which have made positive changes can improve in Search for the next update.

"I imagine for most sites strongly affected, the effects will be site-wide for the time being, and it will take until the next update to see similar strong effects (assuming the new state of the site is significantly better than before)."

Google took down its own mobile-friendliness test in December, but the HubSpot Website Grader is good, and it's free.