Google's UX playbooks: seven free checklists for better mobile sites

Google made seven industry UX playbooks for retail, lead gen, travel, finance, real estate, news and auto sites. Where to download them, what is in them, and which advice has aged.

First published 2019-09-03Updated 2026-11-06

Short answer (2026): Google’s seven UX playbooks are still online as free PDFs, linked below. They are checklists for mobile sites, made by Google’s ads team, based on reviews of many sites in each industry. They are not a ranking guide. Most of the checklist items still hold up. The advice on AMP, page speed tooling and some industry specifics is out of date.

What the playbooks are

In early 2019 a set of PDFs titled “UX Playbook” started spreading through SEO and conversion optimization circles. They sit on Google’s services.google.com file server, aren’t linked from any Google site, and every page carries a “Proprietary + Confidential” stamp. That combination made them look like a leak, and the 2019 version of this page called them that.

They are something more ordinary. Google’s ads teams use material like this with advertisers and agencies to improve mobile landing pages, because better landing pages make ads perform better. Each playbook opens by saying it builds on Google’s earlier 25 mobile site design principles, after a review of sites in that industry (several hundred for retail, travel and finance), and then turns them into a checklist.

When people asked whether following the playbooks would help rankings, Google’s John Mueller said they came from the ads side and weren’t written with SEO in mind. Treat them as conversion advice, not as a peek at the ranking algorithm.

Download the playbooks

All seven links worked when I checked them on 2026-11-06.

The files are large, from 4 MB for auto to 27 MB for finance. Each one starts with a one-page summary of the whole checklist, which is the part most people need.

If your industry isn’t listed, pick the closest one. The retail playbook is the most complete and most of its advice applies to any site that sells something.

The advice that applies everywhere

The same recommendations repeat across all seven playbooks. In my words:

Landing pages

• Put a clear call to action above the fold, and make the button say what happens next. “Get a quote” beats “Submit”.
• State the value proposition near the top, and repeat it at the point of conversion.
• Don’t cover the page with a full-screen pop-up.
• Don’t use carousels that rotate on their own.
• Use font sizes people can read without zooming.

Navigation and search

• Keep the menu short and consolidated, with the most visited categories first.
• Make search visible, not hidden behind an icon, and add autocomplete and spelling correction.
• Never return an empty results page. Show close matches or popular items instead.
• Let people sort and filter long lists.

Forms and checkout

• Cut every field you don’t need. Use one “full name” field, hide the second address line, and default billing to the shipping address.
• Mark required fields, validate as people type, and support browser autofill.
• Show the right keyboard: numbers for phone and card fields, email layout for email fields.
• Use buttons instead of a dropdown when there are fewer than four options.
• Allow guest checkout. Explain what someone gets for creating an account before you ask for one.
• Show a progress bar if the flow has more than two steps.
• Let people save, email or share a cart or a form to finish on another device.

What has aged

The playbooks date from around 2018. A few parts need a 2026 filter:

• AMP. The news, travel, real estate and auto playbooks recommend Accelerated Mobile Pages. Google stopped requiring AMP for the Top Stories carousel in 2021, and few sites build new AMP pages today. Aim for a fast regular page instead.
• Speed metrics. The speed advice refers to older tools and to Google’s RAIL performance model. Today’s yardstick is Core Web Vitals: Largest Contentful Paint, Interaction to Next Paint (which replaced First Input Delay in March 2024) and Cumulative Layout Shift.
• Progressive web apps. Several playbooks push PWAs and “add to home screen” prompts. Those are useful for some products, but they’re no longer a default recommendation for a store or a lead gen site.
• Mobile versus desktop. In 2018 “mobile-friendly” was a selling point. Now it’s the baseline. Google indexes the mobile version of every site, so the checklist items aren’t optional for any page you want found.

For the parts that change fastest, forms and checkout, Google’s own current guidance is on web.dev. Its form best practice guides for payment, address and sign-in forms are kept up to date and go deeper than the playbooks.

How to use them

Open the summary page of your industry’s playbook and go through your own site on a phone, one checklist item at a time. Note every item you fail. Most sites fail several, and the form and checkout items are usually where the cheapest wins are.

Then test the changes instead of shipping them all at once. The playbooks are a list of good defaults built from many sites. They aren’t proof that a change will work on yours.

Sources

1. Google, UX Playbooks for retail, lead gen, travel, finance, real estate, news and auto, hosted on services.google.com, all links checked 2026-11-06.
2. Barry Schwartz, "Google UX Playbooks Not Written For SEO", Search Engine Roundtable, 2019-02-20, quoting John Mueller. seroundtable.com
3. Google, "Principles of mobile site design", Think with Google, the 25 principles the playbooks build on. business.google.com
4. web.dev, "Payment and address form best practices", updated 2026-10-22. web.dev
5. web.dev, "Web Vitals". web.dev