# Mobile-friendly update

Category: [Google Updates & Algorithms](https://seo-geo-glossary.com/en/glossary/category/google-updates-algorithms/) › [Historical updates & events](https://seo-geo-glossary.com/en/glossary/category/google-updates-algorithms/historical-updates/) · Also known as: Mobilegeddon · Historical

**Mobilegeddon is the SEO nickname for Google's mobile-friendly update, which began rolling out globally on April 21, 2015. It boosted mobile-friendly pages in mobile search results. The term is historical.**

## What did the update change?

Google's announcement states that the update affected only rankings on mobile devices, applied to all languages worldwide, and worked on individual pages rather than whole websites. Pages counted as mobile-friendly when text was readable without zooming, tap targets were spaced appropriately, and content did not need horizontal scrolling or unplayable media.

Google added that it still uses many signals. The intent of the query remained a very strong signal, so a relevant page that was not mobile-friendly could still rank high.

## What applies today?

Google now uses the mobile version of a site's content, crawled with the smartphone agent, for indexing and ranking. Google calls this mobile-first indexing. A mobile version is not required for content to appear in Search, but Google strongly recommends one. Google declared the move to mobile-first indexing complete on October 31, 2023, and retired the Mobile-Friendly Test and the Mobile Usability report on December 1, 2023.

## FAQ

**When was Mobilegeddon?** The rollout began on April 21, 2015.

## At a glance

- **Type:** Mobile-friendly update, ranking signal for mobile search
- **Started:** April 21, 2015 (rollout start)
- **Affects:** mobile search results only, worldwide, all languages
- **Completed:** not documented
- **Confirmed by:** yes, official name “mobile-friendly update”; “Mobilegeddon” is unofficial
- **Status:** historical; mobile-first indexing applies today
- **Docs:** [Google: Rolling out the mobile-friendly update](https://developers.google.com/search/blog/2015/04/rolling-out-mobile-friendly-update)

Last checked: October 8, 2026

## Google ranking systems 2010–2024

- **June 8, 2010:** Google announces the completion of Caffeine, its new web indexing system. Google says it delivers 50 percent fresher results than the previous index. ([Source](https://googleblog.blogspot.com/2010/06/our-new-search-index-caffeine.html))
- **February 24, 2011:** Google announces a ranking change against low-quality and copied content that noticeably affects 11.8% of queries. Google later refers to the system by its nickname “Panda”. ([Source](https://googleblog.blogspot.com/2011/02/finding-more-high-quality-sites-in.html))
- **November 3, 2011:** Google improves how it decides when to favour recent results. According to Google the change affects roughly 35 percent of searches and builds on Caffeine. ([Source](https://googleblog.blogspot.com/2011/11/giving-you-fresher-more-recent-search.html))
- **January 19, 2012:** Google launches a change that looks at page layout. Pages with little content and many ads above the fold may rank lower. ([Source](https://developers.google.com/search/blog/2012/01/page-layout-algorithm-improvement))
- **April 24, 2012:** Google announces a change against webspam, later nicknamed “Penguin”. It affects about 3.1% of English queries and roughly 3% of German queries. ([Source](https://developers.google.com/search/blog/2012/04/another-step-to-reward-high-quality))
- **August 2013:** Hummingbird, which Google describes as a major improvement to its overall ranking systems. ([Source](https://developers.google.com/search/docs/appearance/ranking-systems-guide))
- **2015:** Panda becomes part of the core ranking systems. Google now lists it among its retired systems. ([Source](https://developers.google.com/search/docs/appearance/ranking-systems-guide))
- **2015:** Google launches RankBrain, the first deep learning system used in Search. It relates the words in a query to real-world concepts. ([Source](https://blog.google/products/search/how-ai-powers-great-search-results/))
- **April 21, 2015:** Google starts rolling out the mobile-friendly update, boosting mobile-friendly pages in mobile search results. The industry unofficially calls it “Mobilegeddon”. ([Source](https://developers.google.com/search/blog/2015/04/rolling-out-mobile-friendly-update))
- **September 23, 2016:** Penguin becomes part of the core algorithm and now works in real time. Before that, the list of affected sites was only refreshed periodically. ([Source](https://developers.google.com/search/blog/2016/09/penguin-is-now-part-of-our-core))
- **2018:** Google introduces neural matching. The system helps relate queries to pages through underlying concepts. ([Source](https://blog.google/products/search/how-ai-powers-great-search-results/))
- **2018:** Launch of SpamBrain, Google’s AI-based spam prevention system. Google says it identified nearly six times more spam sites in 2021 than in 2020. ([Source](https://developers.google.com/search/blog/2022/04/webspam-report-2021))
- **October 25, 2019:** Google applies BERT to ranking and featured snippets. At launch it affects about one in ten English searches in the US. ([Source](https://blog.google/products/search/search-language-understanding-bert/))
- **October 15, 2020:** Google presents passage ranking, which can assess individual passages of a page for a query. Google expects it to improve 7 percent of queries. ([Source](https://blog.google/products/search/search-on/))
- **April 8, 2021:** First product reviews update. It rewards in-depth product reviews and initially covers English-language reviews only. ([Source](https://developers.google.com/search/blog/2021/04/product-reviews-update))
- **May 18, 2021:** Google introduces MUM, a model trained across 75 languages. Google calls it 1,000 times more powerful than BERT. ([Source](https://blog.google/products/search/introducing-mum/))
- **July 26, 2021:** First link spam update. It aims to identify and nullify link spam across multiple languages and rolls out over two weeks. ([Source](https://developers.google.com/search/blog/2021/07/link-tagging-and-link-spam-update))
- **August 25 to September 9, 2022:** With the helpful content update, Google aims to show more original, helpful content written for people. ([Source](https://status.search.google.com/incidents/sbKc4YSptrSxcUZFDKwU))
- **December 5, 2022 to January 12, 2023:** December 2022 helpful content update. Google says it improves the classifier and works globally in all languages. ([Source](https://status.search.google.com/incidents/XMdX5PmbMvKW4fv3CRvn))
- **April 12 to April 25, 2023:** The product reviews update becomes the reviews update. Google says it now covers reviews of products, services and other things. ([Source](https://status.search.google.com/incidents/5XRfC46rorevFt8yN8iR))
- **September 14 to September 28, 2023:** September 2023 helpful content update. Google says it improves the classifier again. ([Source](https://status.search.google.com/incidents/53diuQvcEsgzqXTPBb8p))
- **November 8 to December 7, 2023:** November 2023 reviews update. As the reviews system is now improved at a regular pace, Google no longer posts future updates on the Status Dashboard. ([Source](https://status.search.google.com/incidents/VqRTcmyQCwfpuYeaVNfn))
- **March 2024:** The helpful content system becomes part of the core ranking systems. Google now lists it among its retired systems. ([Source](https://developers.google.com/search/docs/appearance/ranking-systems-guide))
- **March 5, 2024:** Three new spam policies against expired domain abuse, scaled content abuse and site reputation abuse. The March 2024 spam update launches the same day. ([Source](https://developers.google.com/search/blog/2024/03/core-update-spam-policies))
- **May 5, 2024:** The site reputation abuse policy takes effect. Google had given site owners time to prepare since March. ([Source](https://developers.google.com/search/blog/2024/03/core-update-spam-policies))
- **August 5, 2024:** In the US antitrust case against Google, the court describes Navboost as a signal that memorises which documents users click for a query. This is a court document, not a Google publication. ([Source](https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.dcd.223205/gov.uscourts.dcd.223205.1033.0_1.pdf))
- **November 19, 2024:** Google tightens the site reputation abuse policy. First-party involvement does not change the assessment when third-party content exploits the host site’s ranking signals. ([Source](https://developers.google.com/search/blog/2024/11/site-reputation-abuse))

## Related terms

- [Google algorithm update](https://seo-geo-glossary.com/en/glossary/google-algorithm-update/index.md)
- [Google core update](https://seo-geo-glossary.com/en/glossary/google-core-update/index.md)
- [Helpful content update](https://seo-geo-glossary.com/en/glossary/helpful-content-update/index.md)

## Sources

- [Rolling out the mobile-friendly update – Google Search Central Blog, 2015-04-21](https://developers.google.com/search/blog/2015/04/rolling-out-mobile-friendly-update)
- [Mobile site and mobile-first indexing best practices – Google Search Central](https://developers.google.com/search/docs/crawling-indexing/mobile/mobile-sites-mobile-first-indexing)
- [Mobile-first indexing has landed – Google Search Central Blog (Oct 31, 2023)](https://developers.google.com/search/blog/2023/10/mobile-first-is-here)
- [Helpful content and page experience in Search – Google Search Central Blog (Apr 19, 2023)](https://developers.google.com/search/blog/2023/04/page-experience-in-search)
- [Mobilegeddon – Wikipedia (secondary)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mobilegeddon)

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Last updated: October 8, 2026
URL: https://seo-geo-glossary.com/en/glossary/mobile-friendly-update/