If you've searched "mobile friendly test" recently expecting Google's old standalone checker, you've probably hit a dead end - Google retired the Mobile-Friendly Test tool in December 2023, folding its function into tools that already existed rather than replacing it with a like-for-like successor. It's an easy tool to still be looking for: it had a memorable name, plenty of older guides still link to it, and Google never put one obvious, equally simple replacement in its place.
Where Mobile Usability Checking Lives Now
Google split the old tool's job across two places:
- PageSpeed Insights - run any URL through it and the report includes mobile-specific performance and usability data alongside the Core Web Vitals scoring. This is the closest single-URL, on-demand replacement.
- Google Search Console's Page Experience / Core Web Vitals reports - shows mobile usability at the whole-site level over time, rather than one URL at a time, which is actually more useful for catching a template-wide problem than a single spot-check ever was.
What the Old Tool Actually Checked (and What Replaced Each Part)
- Viewport configuration (whether a page tells mobile browsers how to scale content) - now flagged in PageSpeed Insights' diagnostics and in a standard technical SEO review.
- Tap target sizing (buttons and links close enough together to mis-tap) - still checked, now under PageSpeed Insights' accessibility-adjacent audits rather than a dedicated mobile-only report.
- Text legibility without zooming - folded into the same general page-experience checks rather than called out as its own line item.
- Content wider than the screen (horizontal scroll on mobile) - still flagged, now as part of the same broader diagnostics rather than a standalone mobile-specific test.
The individual checks didn't disappear. What disappeared was the single-purpose tool that bundled them under one simple, mobile-only report.
Why This Still Matters for Small Business Sites
Mobile traffic is the majority of search traffic for most small business sites, and Google has indexed mobile-first for years - meaning the mobile version of your page, not the desktop one, is what actually gets crawled and ranked in most cases. A site that looks fine on a desktop monitor but has cramped navigation, tiny tap targets, or text requiring a pinch-to-zoom on a phone is being judged - and used - primarily in that cramped state, not the polished desktop one a site owner is more likely to have actually looked at.
The Fast Way to Check Yours
Running a page through PageSpeed Insights and manually checking tap targets and text size works for a one-off spot check, but it doesn't scale to a whole site, and it's easy to miss issues on templates you don't personally look at often. AuditCrow's free scan checks mobile usability as part of its technical SEO review, alongside the rest of the fundamentals in our technical SEO checklist. For the performance side of mobile experience, see why website speed matters.