Moz Q&A is closed.
After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.
What if page exists for desktop but not mobile?
-
I have a domain (no subdomains) that serves up different dynamic content for mobile/desktop pages--each having the exact same page url, kind of a semi responsive design, and will be using "Vary: User-Agent" to give Google a heads up on this setup.
However, some of the pages are only valid for mobile or only valid for desktop. In the case of when a page is valid only for mobile (call it mysite.com/mobile-page-only ), Google Webmaster Tools is giving me a soft 404 error under Desktop, saying that the page does not exist, Apparently it is doing that because my program is actually redirecting the user/crawler to the home page. It appears from the info about soft 404 errors that Google is saying since it "doesn't exist" I should give the user a 404 page--which I can make it customized and give the user an option to go to the home page, or choose links from a menu, etc..
My concern is that if I tell the desktop bot that mysite.com/mobile-page-only basically is a 404 error (ie doesn't exist), that it could mess up the mobile bot indexing for that page--since it definitely DOES exist for mobile users..
Does anyone here know for sure that Google will index a page for mobile that is a 404 not found for desktop and vice versa? Obviously it is important to not remove something from an index in which it belongs, so whether Google is careful to differential the two is a very important issue. Has anybody here dealt with this or seen anything from Google that addresses it? Might one be better off leaving it as a soft 404 error?
EDIT: also, what about Bing and Yahoo? Can we assume they will handle it the same way?
EDIT: closely related question--in a case like mine does Google need a separate sitemap for the valid mobile pages and valid desktop pages even though most links will be in both? I can't tell from reading several q&a on this.
Thanks, Ted
-
Monica,
I'm going to open a new thread to ask a similar question, as I think I didn't ask it very well.
Thanks for your input,
Ted
-
Thanks. If I understand you, the mobile bot won't crawl a url that the desktop bot has said needs to be fixed for it to work right for desktop. . Would you agree that doesn't really sound right on Google's part, since the url is fine for mobile use? I don't know why it wouldn't crawl for mobile, but if that's the way it is I can try fixing it on desktop to see if that enables the mobile to get crawled.
Once I do that I guess I'll find out whether a 404 not found for desktop will disable it from crawling for mobile (yes that link is accessible from other pages)--I was hoping to avoid trial and error on that because the time lag seems like it would be hard to pin down.
In a nutshell here's what I'm concerned will happen:
Google mobile bot crawls my mobile page and indexes it: Then the desktop bot crawls the same url and gets a 404 not found. Because of the desktop not found, Google removes it from the mobile page index.
I don't see a good way to test that since it depends on when each crawler is crawling. And, if this is what it is doing, I can't think of a good solution to having a responsive site with some content meant only for mobile indexing or only for desktop indexing.
-
If a URL is labeled a 404 it will not be crawled again unless there is a reason to, you mark it as fixed, or you edit the link in some form or fashion. Mark it as fixed and see if the error comes back. There is no harm in doing this.
Can you get to the page on your mobile device just by clicking through your site? If you can, that is good, it will eventually encourage a mobile bot to crawl it. If you can fetch and render as google, then I would just give it some time. I am not sure if there is a string of code you can add to the head of that page telling the robots that it is a mobile only page. I don't know how that works.
I would just mark it as fixed right now and see what happens over the next couple of days.
-
Hi Monica-thanks for your reply:
Ok, for a page that is supposed to be mobile only within a responsive-like setup(ie one domain) here's what I see:
The desktop bot crawls the link and gives a soft 404 error -- presumably because the page is currently being redirected to the home page.
The mobile bot is not crawling that link despite it being prominent on the main site home page, as my dbase is tracking the bot crawling and is not showing that it crawled that link for mobile (but is for desktop), and a search on my smartphone doesn't show that link either (even though it does show other links for pages used by both).. **Yet, if I fetch the mobile only page in webmaster tools using their mobile bot it finds it and renders it perfectly. ** So, why isn't it crawling it? Is it because when the mobile bot crawls it first looks and sees that that link is already 'flagged' as a soft 404 for the desktop? Or, is it because the mobile crawler is getting hung up on a link on the home page for mobile that has nothing to do with this mobile-only link?
It appears that the mobile bot is influenced by the desktop bot results--which is my fear: It seems to me their 2 bots should be independent of each other. If they aren't independent then if I change it to a 404 not found for desktop, would that even help, or would that prevent the mobile bot from ever trying to crawl it?
I would think that anybody who has a responsive page design and has blocked out certain content so that it renders only for mobile or only for non-mobile has had to face this issue.
Not sure what to do--I could fix the soft errors--change them to 404 not found and just see then if Google starts indexing for mobile or not, but was hoping to get some feedback before experimenting.
Thanks again, and please share more if you have more thoughts!
-
Did you look at your Mobile 404 errors? Google uses a different bot for mobile sites and anything related to that mobile page. Chances are, if it isn't reflecting a 404 in the Mobile errors in GWT, it is being indexed properly.
Check it out from you phone. Google the exact keyword and your company name. See if you can get to the page and if it is in fact the correct page.
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
-
Internal links to landing pages
Hi, we are in the process of building a new website and we have 12 different locations and for theses 12 locations we have landing pages with unique copy on the following: 1. Marketing...2 SEO....3. PPC....4. Web Design Therefor there are 48 landing pages. The marketing pages are the most important ones to us in terms of traffic and priority. My question is: 1. Should we put a dropdown of the are pages in the main header under locations that link to the area marketing pages? 2. What is the best way to link all the sub pages such as London Web Design? Should these links just be coming off the London marketing page? or should we have a sitemap in the footer that lists every page? Thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Caffeine_Marketing0 -
Is it ok to repeat a (focus) keyword used on a previous page, on a new page?
I am cataloguing the pages on our website in terms of which focus keyword has been used with the page. I've noticed that some pages repeated the same keyword / term. I've heard that it's not really good practice, as it's like telling google conflicting information, as the pages with the same keywords will be competing against each other. Is this correct information? If so, is the alternative to use various long-winded keywords instead? If not, meaning it's ok to repeat the keyword on different pages, is there a maximum recommended number of times that we want to repeat the word? Still new-ish to SEO, so any help is much appreciated! V.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Vitzz1 -
Massive Amount of Pages Deindexed
On or about 12/1/17 a massive amount of my site's pages were deindexed. I have done the following: Ensured all pages are "index,follow" Ensured there are no manual penalites Ensured the sitemap correlates to all the pages Resubmitted to Google ALL pages are gone from Bing as well In the new SC interface, there are 661 pages that are Excluded with 252 being "Crawled - currently not indexed: The page was crawled by Google, but not indexed. It may or may not be indexed in the future; no need to resubmit this URL for crawling." What in the world does this mean and how the heck do I fix this. This is CRITICAL. Please help! The url is https://www.hkqpc.com
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | D.J.Hanchett0 -
Which of these examples are doorway pages?
Hi there, I am soon to launch a new platform/directory website, however, have a concern over doorway pages. I have read many articles on the difference between Doorway and Landing pages and do have a good understanding, however, am still very anxious that what I intend to do will be risking Google penalties. I have looked at other directory/platform websites and have noticed that a lot of them are still using doorway pages and are not getting penalised. So I was wondering if someone wouldn't mind kindly letting me know their opinion on which of the following examples are doorway pages and which are not so I can better understand what I can and cannot do? Example 1: When I Google 'piano lessons new york' and 'trumpet lessons new york' I get the following 'landing pages' in search: https://takelessons.com/new-york/piano-lessons https://takelessons.com/new-york/trumpet-lessons To me, the above pages are definitely doorway pages as they are very similar with content and text and are simply an intermediary step between the Google search and their listings pages for piano/trumpet teachers in New York. Is this correct? Example 2: When I Google 'piano lessons Sydney' I get presented with the following web page in search: http://www.musicteacher.com.au/directory/sydney-nsw/lessons/piano/ I would think that this is NOT a doorway page as the user has been taken directly to the search results page in the directory and the page doesn't seem to have been set up for the sole purpose of listing in search results for 'Piano Lessons in Sydney'. Example 3: When I Google 'pet minding Sydney' I get presented with the following two pages in search: https://www.madpaws.com.au/petsitters/Sydney-New-South-Wales?type=night&service=1&from=0&to=99&city=Sydney&state=New-South-Wales https://www.pawshake.com.au/petsitters/Sydney%252C%2520New%2520South%2520Wales%252C%2520Australia Like Example 2, I don't think these pages would be classified as doorway pages as they too direct to the search results page in the site directory instead of an intermediary page. What do you think? Thanks so much in advance for your expertise and help! Kind Regards, Adrian
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Amor20050 -
Redirecting homepage to internal page (2nd Tier page)
We are planning to experiment redirecting our homepage to one of the 2nd tier page. I mean....example.com to example.com/page. We need this page to rank well, but it doesn't have much internal links or external back-links, so we opt for this redirect. Advantage with this page is, it has "keyword" we want to rank for in URL. "page" in example.com/page. Will this help or hurt us in SEO? I think we are missing keyword in our root domain, so interested to highlight this page. Thanks, Satish
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | vtmoz0 -
Pages with excessive number of links
Hi all, I work for a retailer and I've crawled our website with RankTracker for optimization suggestions. The main suggestion is "Pages with excessive number of links: 4178" The page with the largest amount of links has 634 links (627 internal, 7 external), the lowest 382 links (375 internal, 7 external). However, when I view the source on any one of the example pages, it becomes obvious that the site's main navigation header contains 358 links, so every new page starts with 358 links before any content. Our rivals and much larger sites like argos.co.uk appear to have just as many links in their main navigation menu. So my questions are: 1. Will these excessive links really be causing us a problem or is it just 'good practice' to have fewer links
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Bee159
2. Can I use 'no follow' to stop Google etc from counting the 358 main navigation links
3. Is have 4000+ pages of your website all dumbly pointing to other pages a help or hindrance?
4. Can we 'minify' this code so it's cached on first load and therefore loads faster? Thank you.0 -
Date of page first indexed or age of a page?
Hi does anyone know any ways, tools to find when a page was first indexed/cached by Google? I remember a while back, around 2009 i had a firefox plugin which could check this, and gave you a exact date. Maybe this has changed since. I don't remember the plugin. Or any recommendations on finding the age of a page (not domain) for a website? This is for competitor research not my own website. Cheers, Paul
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | MBASydney0 -
Does an H1 have to be at the top of a page?
Because H1 "may" carry some weight with Google does it have to be placed at the top of the page? Can I place it towards the bottom of the page instead in normal body size? My goal is to keep the main keywords in the H1 but create a much friendlier title for the customer to read at the top of the page.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | PottyScotty0