Removal tool - no option to choose mobile vs desktop. Why?
-
Google's removal tool doesn't give a person the option to tell them which index - mobile friendly, or desktop/laptop - the url should be removed from. Why?
I may have a fundamental misunderstanding. The way I thought it works is that when you have a dynamically generated page based on the user agent, (ie, the SAME URL but different formatting for smartphones as for desktop/laptop) then the Google mobile bot will index the mobile friendly version and the desktop bot will index the desktop version -- so Google will have 2 different indexed results for the same url. That SEEMS to be validated by the existence of the words 'mobile-friendly' next to some of my mobile friendly page descriptions on mobile devices.
HOWEVER, if that's how it works--why would Google not allow a person to remove one of the urls and keep the other? Is it because Google thinks a mobile version of a website must have all of the identical pages as the desktop version? What if it doesnt? What if a website is designed so that some of the slower pages simply aren't given a mobile version? Is it possible that Google doesn't really save results for a mobile friendly page if there is a corresponding desktop page-- but only checks to see if it renders ok? That is, it keeps only one indexed copy of each url, and basically assumes the mobile title and actual content is the same and only the formatting is different? That assumption isn't always true -- mobile devices lend themselves to different interactions with the user - but it certainly could save Google billions of dollars in storage.
Thoughts?
-
Thanks for your reply, but the link you pointed me to isn't my situation. I'm not redirecting to separate urls. Mine is this: https://developers.google.com/webmasters/mobile-sites/mobile-seo/configurations/dynamic-serving
I HAVE to figure out what Google is doing in my situation because if I don't and I assume wrong, then lots of pages for either my desktop or mobile friendly won't be indexed.
Surely lots of website owners have had their developers create a minimal mobile friendly site with less content and pages than desktop users get and chosen the dynamic-serving approach, but I have yet to receive a reply from anyone who has faced that issue..It's a very serious issue for me because either I have to consider dumping the dynamic serving in favor of separate mobile urls (if that would work), or I have to do a ton of programming to add in content so that all the urls have both mobile and desktop content.
-
**There's a lengthy discussion on it here: **https://developers.google.com/webmasters/mobile-sites/mobile-seo/configurations/separate-urls?hl=en
Notably this section:
For Googlebot, we do not have any preference and recommend that webmasters consider their users when deciding on their redirection policy. The most important thing is to serve correct and consistent redirects, i.e. redirect to the equivalent content on the desktop or mobile site. If your configuration is wrong, some users may not be able to see your content at all.
In my opinion, trying to figure out what Google does on the backend is a losing proposition. Maybe they index both; maybe they index one. Heck, there's no way to know if they even index full text now for every site. There's certainly a lot of optimization going on in the back-end that is above and beyond our purview as SEO practitioners.
Google says they don't care what kind of redirect you use for mobile. Likely, that means your mobile sites are being semantically linked to your desktop version of the pages -- they specifically recommend against pointing two separate page redirects to the same mobile page. They recommend that you add a link that lets mobile users click over to desktop for usability. That's good enough for me.
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
-
block primary . xxx domain with disavow tool
Hi friends I discovered spam url attack on top sites with good google positions for specific keyword. Can I block primary domain like .xxx with disavow tool? There is hundreds of different domains but primary domain is always the same. for example like this domain:xxx? Thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | netcomsia0 -
Mixed Mobile Friendly Google vs Bing
We are having an odd thing happen with our Mobile Friendly status. Google has had the pages "Mobile Friendly" for almost a year now. While Bing says we fail mobile friendly. We've tried changing the two things we are failing on in the Bing test but that breaks the page for some users. Two things we are failing on Bing are: Viewport Not Configured correctly - We have tried their suggested tag, it breaks our pages on Tablets. Page content does not fit device Width - Page does fit the devices fine, Google has no problem with it. What do you suggest we do?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | K-WINTER0 -
Removing Parameterized URLs from Google Index
We have duplicate eCommerce websites, and we are in the process of implementing cross-domain canonicals. (We can't 301 - both sites are major brands). So far, this is working well - rankings are improving dramatically in most cases. However, what we are seeing in some cases is that Google has indexed a parameterized page for the site being canonicaled (this is the site that is getting the canonical tag - the "from" page). When this happens, both sites are being ranked, and the parameterized page appears to be blocking the canonical. The question is, how do I remove canonicaled pages from Google's index? If Google doesn't crawl the page in question, it never sees the canonical tag, and we still have duplicate content. Example: A. www.domain2.com/productname.cfm%3FclickSource%3DXSELL_PR is ranked at #35, and B. www.domain1.com/productname.cfm is ranked at #12. (yes, I know that upper case is bad. We fixed that too.) Page A has the canonical tag, but page B's rank didn't improve. I know that there are no guarantees that it will improve, but I am seeing a pattern. Page A appears to be preventing Google from passing link juice via canonical. If Google doesn't crawl Page A, it can't see the rel=canonical tag. We likely have thousands of pages like this. Any ideas? Does it make sense to block the "clicksource" parameter in GWT? That kind of scares me.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | AMHC0 -
Google Webmaster Remove URL Tool
Hi All, To keep this example simple.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Mark_Ch
You have a home page. The home page links to 4 pages (P1, P2, P3, P4). ** Home page**
P1 P2 P3 P4 You now use Google Webmaster removal tool to remove P4 webpage and cache instance. 24 hours later you check and see P4 has completely disappeared. You now remove the link from the home page pointing to P4. My Question
Does Google now see only pages P1, P2 & P3 and therefore allocate link juice at a rate of 33.33% each. Regards Mark0 -
Extensions Vs Non Extensions
Hello, I'm a big fan of clean urls. However i'm curious as to what you guys do, to remove them in a friendly way which doesn't cause confusion. Standard URLS
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Whittie
http://www.example.com/example1.html
http://www.example.com/example2.html
http://www.example.com/example3.html
http://www.example.com/example4.php
http://www.example.com/example5.php What looks better (in my eyes)
http://www.example.com/example1/
http://www.example.com/example2/
http://www.example.com/example3/
http://www.example.com/example4/
http://www.example.com/example5/ Do you keep extensions throughout your website, avoiding any sort of confusion and page duplication; OR Put a canonical link pointing to the extension-less version of each page, with the anticipation of this version indexing into Google and other Search Engines. OR 301 Each page which has an extension to an extension-less version, and remove all linking to ".html" site wide causing errors within software like Dreamweaver, but working properly. OR Another way? Please emphasise I'm sorry if this is a little vague and I appreciate any angles on this, I quite like clean url's but unsure a hassle-less way to create it. Thanks for any advice in advance0 -
Any SEO Penalties from Removing RSS Feed?
Hi, I have a site that has a Feedburner feed that has been in place for 5+ years. I am considering getting rid of the feed or starting a new one to combat content scraping. Google continues to rank thieves' sites ahead of mine. Google and Bing have no issue and always get it right. I use Wordpress and have the plugin PubSubHubb, but that is no guarantee. Nonetheless, there is no monetary value of my subscribers whereas the content not being accredited to me takes money out of my pocket as my model is advertising. Is there any SEO issue if I do any of the following: Delete the feed and not have one? Change the feed address and drop all subscribers? Attachments: DMCA Dashboard; example of being outranked by scrapers. My site: www.furniturefashion.com Thanks for your time and hopefully I did not vent too much. OWmou6k f6W3xkq.png
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | will21121 -
Mobile Site Outranking Main Site
Hi, We have recently been hit with a problem regarding our mobile site, where it is outranking our main site. This is causing a drop in orders and ranknings for our main site. It would appear that google has indexed our mobile site and so the two are now competing against each other. Our main site is on a .co.uk and our mobile site on a .mobi, but we have now taken down the mobile site until we get this sorted. Does anyone else have any experience of this happening and how to stop it happening again? Thanks Steve
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Steve251 -
WP plugins not updating - unable to remove
how can i update plugins if i get this: Downloading update from http://downloads.wordpress.org/plugin/akismet.2.5.7.zip… Unpacking the update… Installing the latest version… Removing the old version of the plugin… Could not remove the old plugin. Plugin update failed. same for AIOSEO
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Ezpro90