Yes. Separating mobile from desktop is not an optional extra. It is built into the main tools an SEO company already uses, and any agency that reports a single blended number is hiding information you need. Mobile and desktop behave differently in search, and they should be measured as two distinct things.
Where the separation comes from
Two parts of search performance are device specific by design.
The first is ranking and search traffic. Google Search Console lets you filter the Performance report by device, so you can see clicks, impressions, average position, and click-through rate for mobile, desktop, and tablet on their own. You can also add device as a comparison, which puts mobile and desktop figures side by side for the same query or page. This means an SEO company can answer a precise question: is this page ranking and earning clicks on phones, or only on desktop?
The second is page experience. Core Web Vitals, the Google metrics for loading (LCP), responsiveness (INP), and visual stability (CLS), are reported per device. Search Console has separate Core Web Vitals reports for mobile and desktop, each grouping your URLs into good, needs improvement, and poor. The same URL can pass on desktop and fail on mobile, because a phone has less processing power, a smaller screen, and often a slower connection. A blended score would hide that gap completely.
Why mobile usually gets weighted more heavily
Google uses mobile-first indexing, which means it crawls and evaluates the mobile version of your pages to decide how they rank. For most sites, the mobile experience is the one that drives the ranking. So when an SEO company tracks mobile separately, it is not just being thorough. It is measuring the version of the page that Google actually uses.
That does not make desktop irrelevant. Some audiences, such as business buyers researching during work hours, still convert more on desktop. The point of separate tracking is to know which is which for your specific site rather than guessing.
How an agency does it in practice
A competent SEO company will set up tracking along these lines:
In Search Console, it filters the Performance report by device and watches mobile clicks, impressions, and average position over time. If mobile position slips while desktop holds steady, that is a specific signal to investigate, often a layout, speed, or content rendering problem on phones.
In GA4, it segments behavior by device category. This shows how mobile and desktop visitors differ once they land, including engagement, conversions, and revenue. If mobile traffic is high but mobile conversions lag, the problem is on the page, not in the rankings.
For page experience, it reviews the mobile and desktop Core Web Vitals reports separately and pulls field data from real users rather than relying only on lab tests. Field data reflects the actual mix of devices and connections your visitors use.
Many agencies combine Search Console and GA4 in a dashboard, often built in Looker Studio, with device as a standard filter. That lets them spot a drop in mobile organic performance, identify the affected pages, and start troubleshooting quickly instead of waiting for a monthly summary.
What to ask for
When you talk to an SEO company, ask three direct questions. Can you show me mobile and desktop search performance as separate numbers? Are my Core Web Vitals being judged separately by device, and how do they currently score? Does mobile traffic convert at a similar rate to desktop on my site?
If the agency can answer with real figures from your own Search Console and analytics, it is genuinely tracking mobile performance separately. If it only offers a single combined score for traffic, rankings, or page speed, it is leaving out the part of the picture that Google cares about most.