Mobile site not getting indexed
-
My site is www.findyogi.com - a shopping comparison site
The mobile site is hosted at m.findyogi.com
I fixed my sitemap and attribution to mobile site in May last week. My mobile site pages are getting de-indexed since then.
Website - www.findyogi.com/mobiles/motorola/motorola-moto-g-16gb-b95ef8/price - indexed
Mobile - m.findyogi.com/mobiles/motorola/motorola-moto-g-16gb-b95ef8/price - _not indexed. _
Google is crawling my website and mobile site normally.
What am I am doing wrong?
-
Thanks Tom. This answers it.
-
Hi,
Both versions of the URL aren’t appearing in search results but both are accessible from the same URL, depending on which device you attempt to access the site with. But when you search for a page on your site on a mobile phone and hit the link to the page you’re requesting, then you're directed toward the mobile page thanks to your redirect, even though you aren’t hitting a link to the mobile subdomain.
If you wanted to remove the canonical tags from all your pages that would see your mobile pages indexed in SERPs, but you’d be causing yourself a duplicate content issue and forcing both those pages to compete with one another for the same keyword(s).
So when you search for a page on your site in Google after removing the canonical tag, you’d see the full site URL and then the mobile URL, giving the user the choice to click either. When they click to go to the full site they’ll still be redirected to your mobile page.
I can understand your concern that your mobile site isn’t getting indexed and therefore will not be found in Google but you’re misunderstanding the point - these pages are essentially 2 versions of the same page, containing the same content and different styles. Rather than forcing mobile and main site to compete with each other, you can have the best of both worlds with your current (correct) implementation of the canonical tag.
Thanks,
Tom
-
Thanks Tom.
It does answer the reason. What I fail to understand is, shouldn't Google show the mobile site on mobile search? Shouldn't canonical be device dependent?
-
Hi there,
I’ve taken a quick look at your site, and the reason these pages are not getting indexed is because of the rel=canonical link element in your which indicates to google which version of the page you’d like to be indexed. Note this is just a guideline to Google, but since you’re using it properly they are only indexing the none mobile version of your site.
I can see that you’ve got a redirect in place to send mobile traffic to the mobile page, and there is no need to have both versions of a single page being indexed, and therefore competing against each other in SERPs. As these pages are next to identical in content, googlebot is seeing your rel=canonical and attributing all the SEO juice to your original page.
When someone searches for one of your products they see the result for your desktop page as only one result, not 2 results competing against each other. The user then clicks on the link and is directed toward the mobile site if they’re a mobile user, and your full site if they’re a desktop user.
Take a look at this article on the Google Webmasters Blog:
http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.co.uk/2009/02/specify-your-canonical.html
This line is key: ‘With rel="canonical", properties of the two URLs are consolidated in our index and search results display wikia.com's intended version.’
Let me know if there’s something I’ve missed here, but it looks to me as though you are using the rel=canonical tag correctly.
Thanks,
Tom
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Will my site get devalued if I add the same company schema to all the pages of my website?
If I add the exact same schema markup to every page on my website - is it considered duplicate content? Our CMS is telling me that if I want schema mark-up on our site that it has to be the same on every page on the website. This limitation is frustrating but I am trying to figure out the best way to work within their boundaries. Your help is appreciated.
Technical SEO | | Annette_Wetzel0 -
Site address change: new site isn't showing up in Google, old site is gone.
We just transitioned mccacompanies.com to confluentstrategies.com. The problem is that when I search for the old name, the old website doesn't come up anymore to redirect people to the new site. On the local card, Google has even taken off the website altogether. (I'm currently still trying to gain access to manage the business listing) When I search for confluent strategies, the website doesn't come up at all. But if I use the site: operator, it is in the index. Basically, my client has effectively disappeared off the face of the Google. (In doing other name changes, this has never happened to me before) What can I do?
Technical SEO | | MichaelGregory0 -
Making a site mobile friendly
Hey Mozzers, Im having a go at making our site mobile friendly without enlisting the help of developers and incorporating additional costs. I am ok with most of it as its just CSS work bar the odd occasion when i need to reposition some elements within the code. However, i have found myself wanting to use display:none {} on many elements that are just not practical on a mobile site. Some pages may have to hide substantial content. Would this be considered an issue or will google just see it as me hiding impractical elements for a different sized screen. I have googled this question for the past hour and there is a whole bunch of conflicting advice. As always, Many thanks
Technical SEO | | ATP0 -
Why are only PDFs on my client's site being indexed, and not actual pages?
My client has recently built a new site (we did not build this), which is a subdomain of their main site. The new site is: https://addstore.itelligencegroup.com/uk/en/. (Their main domain is: http://itelligencegroup.com/uk/) This new Addstore site has recently gone live (in the past week or so) and so far, Google appears to have indexed 56 pdf files that are on the site, but it hasn't indexed any of the actual web pages yet. I can't figure out why though. I've checked the robots.txt file for the site which appears to be fine: https://addstore.itelligencegroup.com/robots.txt. Does anyone have any ideas about this?
Technical SEO | | mfrgolfgti0 -
Removed Subdomain Sites Still in Google Index
Hey guys, I've got kind of a strange situation going on and I can't seem to find it addressed anywhere. I have a site that at one point had several development sites set up at subdomains. Those sites have since launched on their own domains, but the subdomain sites are still showing up in the Google index. However, if you look at the cached version of pages on these non-existent subdomains, it lists the NEW url, not the dev one in the little blurb that says "This is Google's cached version of www.correcturl.com." Clearly Google recognizes that the content resides at the new location, so how come the old pages are still in the index? Attempting to visit one of them gives a "Server Not Found" error, so they are definitely gone. This is happening to a couple of sites, one that was launched over a year ago so it doesn't appear to be a "wait and see" solution. Any suggestions would be a huge help. Thanks!!
Technical SEO | | SarahLK0 -
Should I go with a Mobile Site or Responsive Design
So I work with a Video Editing Plugin company and we have hit a bit of a conundrum with our mobile site plan. At first we were going to a stripped down version of our current site since the customer base has yet to purchase off mobile and almost all of the web traffic comes from a full computer. ( As video editing on tablets still leaves a bit to be desired). I was thinking a mobile site, but at the same point, I don't want to have issues when it comes to URLs and what not. Given that a majority of our traffic is non mobile. Would it be better to design a separate stripped down mobile site, or would responsive still be the better choice? Are mobile specific sites becoming old fashion?
Technical SEO | | TodorF.1 -
Cross links between sites
hi, We have several ecommerce sites and we cross linked 3 of them by mistake. We realize that the sites were linked through WMT, We have shut down 2 of the sites about 2 months ago, but WMT still shows the links coming from those 2 sites. how do we make sure that google will see the sites are shut down. Is there a better of way resolving this issue. We are no longer using those sites, so do not need them to be active. whats the best solution to show google that the links are no longer there. Crawler shows that it was able to crawl the site 45 days after it is shut down. thanks nick
Technical SEO | | orion680 -
Site Crawl
I was wondering if there was a way to use SEOmoz's tool to quickly and easily find all the URLs on you site and not just the ones with errors. The site that I am working on does not have a site map. What I am trying to do is find all the URLs along with their titles and description tags. Thank you very much for your help
Technical SEO | | pakevin0