Google Optimization: Best practices for large websites with separate mobile and desktop versions

Google has updated its Search Central documentation with new recommendations for large websites that support separate mobile and desktop versions. This update specifically addresses link parity issues that can affect crawl performance.

"Crawl budget" refers to the number of pages that Google will crawl and index on a website over a period of time.

🚀 This resource allocation is important for SEO because it determines how quickly Google discovers, crawls, and indexes new or updated content. For large websites, effective use of the "crawl budget" can mean the difference between discovering new pages quickly or being delayed for weeks.

• 📌 Google now explicitly recommends that large websites provide the same links on their mobile version as on their desktop version.
• 📌 Google added the following specific instruction to its "crawl budget" documentation: "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, make sure they are included in the sitemap file. Google only indexes the mobile version pages, and limiting the links that appear there can slow down the discovery of new pages. "
• 📌 This add-on provides two clear ways to manage links between mobile and desktop versions: include all links from the desktop version to the mobile version (preferred method) or ensure that all links are included in the sitemap file of the website.