Google Says Having Different Links On Mobile vs Desktop Pages Can Slow Crawl On Large Sites

Google has made a small update to its crawl budget documentation page to add a best practice is to have the same links on both the mobile and desktop version (if you have different versions) on the page. If you do not do this, it can slow the crawling and discovery of your site, especially if it is a large site.

Google wrote, “Added a best practice about making sure all links are present on the mobile version to the crawl budget documentation.”

If you do not, Google said, “For large websites with separate HTML on mobile and desktop versions, the discovery of new pages can be slower if the mobile version does not include all the links that are present on the desktop version.”

Here is the bullet point that was added:

If your site uses separate HTML for mobile and desktop versions, provide the same set of links on the mobile version as you have on the desktop version. If it’s not possible to provide the same set of links on the mobile version, ensure that they’re included in a sitemap file. Google only indexes the mobile version of pages, and limiting the links shown there can slow down discovery of new pages.

Forum discussion at X.