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
-
Blogs Not Getting Indexed Intermittently - Why?
Over the past 5 months many of our clients are having indexing issues for their blog posts.
Technical SEO | | JohnBracamontes
A blog from 5 months ago could be indexed, and a blog from 1 month ago could be indexed but blogs from 4, 3 and 2 months ago aren't indexed. It isn't consistent and there is not commonality across all of these clients that would point to why this is happening. We've checked sitemap, robots, canonical issues, internal linking, combed through Search Console, run Moz reports, run SEM Rush reports (sorry Moz), but can't find anything. We are now manually submitting URLs to be indexed to try and ensure they get into the index. Search console reports for many of the URLs will show that the blog has been fetched and crawled, but not indexed (with no errors). In some cases we find that the blog paginated pages (i.e. blog/page/2 , blog/page/3 , etc.) are getting indexed but not the blogs themselves. There aren't any nofollow tags on the links going to the blogs either. Any ideas? *I've added a screenshot of one of the URL inspection reports from Search Console alt text0 -
Canonicalization, does it still index
If I have 2 pages that are identical but on different domains that our team manages, if we place a rel=canonical tag on the page we prefer/should display, will the page that doesn't have the canonical tag still be indexed and show on SERPs?
Technical SEO | | kroe10 -
Why is my site not being indexed?
Hi, I have performed a site:www.menshealthanswers.co.uk search on Google and none of the pages are being indexed. I do not have a "noindex" value on my robot tag This is what is in place: Any ideas? Jason
Technical SEO | | Jason_Marsh1230 -
Mobile Usability update mobile and desktop versions
Hello, A number of our clients have both m.website.com and website.com versions of their site. Per the latest update coming in April from Google, do I need to make sure all clients with just a desktop version are mobile-friendly (according to WT). Also, do I need to make both versions for those clients that have both m.website.com and website.com mobile-friendly or just the m.website.com? Thank you!!!!
Technical SEO | | lfrazer0 -
Removing a staging area/dev area thats been indexed via GWT (since wasnt hidden) from the index
Hi, If you set up a brand new GWT account for a subdomain, where the dev area is located (separate from the main GWT account for the main live site) and remove all pages via the remove tool (by leaving the page field blank) will this definately not risk hurting/removing the main site (since the new subdomain specific gwt account doesn't apply to the main site in any way) ?? I have a new client who's dev area has been indexed, dev team has now prevented crawling of this subdomain but the 'the stable door was shut after the horse had already bolted' and the subdomains pages are on G's index so we need to remove the entire subdomain development area asap. So we are going to do this via the remove tool in a subdomain specific new gwt account, but I just want to triple check this wont accidentally get main site removed too ?? Cheers Dan
Technical SEO | | Dan-Lawrence0 -
Duplicate content issue index.html vs non index.html
Hi I have an issue. In my client's profile, I found that the "index.html" are mostly authoritative than non "index.html", and I found that www. version is more authoritative than non www. The problem is that I find the opposite situation where non "index.html" are more authoritative than "index.html" or non www more authoritative than www. My logic would tell me to still redirect the non"index.html" to "index.html". Am I right? and in the case I find the opposite happening, does it matter if I still redirect the non"index.html" to "index.html"? The same question for www vs non www versions? Thank you
Technical SEO | | Ideas-Money-Art0 -
Mobile site rank on Google S.E. instead of desktop site.
Hello, all SEOers~ Today, I would like to hear your opinion regarding on Mobile site and duplicate contents issue. I have a mobile version of our website that is hosted on a subdomain (m instead www). Site is targeting UK and Its essentially the same content, formatted differently. So every URL on www exists also at the "m" subdomain and is identical content. (there are some different contents, yet I could say about 90% or more contents are same) Recently I've noticed that search results are showing links to our mobile site instead of the desktop site. (Google UK) I have a sitemap.xml for both sites, the mobile sitemap defined as follows: I didn't block googlebot from mobile site and also didn't block googlebot-mobile from desktop site. I read and watched Google webmaster tool forum and related video from Matt Cutts. I found many opinion that there is possibility which cause duplicate contents issue and I should do one of followings. 1. Block googlebot from mobile site. 2. Use canonical Tag on mobile site which points to desktop site. 3. Create and develop different contents (needless to say...) Do you think duplicate contents issue caused my mobile site rank on S.E. instead of my desktop site? also Do you think those method will help to show my desktop site on S.E.? I was wondering that I have multi-country sites which is same site format as I mentioned above. However, my other country sites are totally doing fine on Google. Only difference that I found is my other country sites have different Title & Meta Tag comparing to desktop site, but my UK mobile site has same Title & Meta Tag comparing to desktop. Do you think this also has something to do with current problem? Please people~! Feel free to make some comments and share your opinion. Thanks for reading my long long explanation.
Technical SEO | | Artience0 -
How do I set up a site review for a password protected site?
We need to conduct a SEO analysis for a website that is on a private, password protected development site -- is there anyway for SEOMoz tools to access and analyze a PW protected site? Thank you, Sara Merten
Technical SEO | | kev110