Google Indexing Desktop & Mobile Versions
-
We have a relatively new site and I have noticed recently that Google seems to be indexing both the mobile and the desktop version of our site. There are some queries where the mobile version will show up and sometimes both mobile and desktop show up. This can't be good. I would imagine that what is supposed to happen is that the desktop version is the one that should be indexed (always) and browser detection will load the mobile version where appropriate once the user is on the site.
Do you have any advice on what we should do to solve this problem as we are a bit stuck?
-
Have you got switchboard tags implemented? That should solve the issue.
-
You can easily restrict portions with robots.txt depending on how exactly your site is set up. So for instance, something like:
Desktop site: http://www.domain.com/robots.txt
User-agent: Googlebot
Allow: /User-agent: Googlebot-Mobile
Disallow: /Mobile site:http://m.domain.com/robots.txt
User-agent: Googlebot
Disallow: /User-agent: Googlebot-Mobile
Allow: /Or
User-agent: *
Allow: /
User-agent: Googlebot
Disallow: /mobile/
Allow: /
User-agent: bingbot
Disallow: /mobile/
Allow: /
User-agent: Googlebot-Mobile
Disallow: /
Allow: /mobile/
User-agent: bingbot-mobile
Disallow: /
-
What we recommend is that you make sure that you're serving up the mobile version to Google's mobile crawler and the desktop version to Google's desktop crawler. You may be doing both, serving mobile pages to both the desktop and mobile crawlers.
I recommend taking a look at that to make sure it's not an issue. You can crawl your own site using something like Screaming Frog SEO spider and change the user agent to mobile vs. desktop to test it.
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
-
Why images are not getting indexed and showing in Google webmaster
Hi, I would like to ask why our website images not indexing in Google. I have shared the following screenshot of the search console. https://www.screencast.com/t/yKoCBT6Q8Upw Last week (Friday 14 Sept 2018) it was showing 23.5K out 31K were submitted and indexed by Google. But now, it is showing only 1K 😞 Can you please let me know why might this happen, why images are not getting indexed and showing in Google webmaster.
Technical SEO | | 21centuryweb0 -
How long does Google/Bing take to index
Hello we have 2-3 new pages being submitted every night to google/bing via our sitemap. Two issues I am noticing. Wondering if anyone else has same issues. a) 22 URL submitted via sitemap but only 1 indexed in two weeks. there are no errors showing b) If i submit manually using "Fetch As Google" and request indexing - the page gets indexed right way but after a day it seems to be unindexed - it will show up when i search (site:domain.com) but then disappear from the results doing the same search a few days later. Is this normal or do i have a problem that needs addressing? thank you
Technical SEO | | sancarlos0 -
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 -
Why Google ranks a page with Meta Robots: NO INDEX, NO FOLLOW?
Hi guys, I was playing with the new OSE when I found out a weird thing: if you Google "performing arts school london" you will see w w w . mountview . org. uk at the 3rd position. The point is that page has "Meta Robots: NO INDEX, NO FOLLOW", why Google indexed it? Here you can see the robots.txt allows Google to index the URL but not the content, in article they also say the meta robots tag will properly avoid Google from indexing the URL either. Apparently, in my case that page is the only one has the tag "NO INDEX, NO FOLLOW", but it's the home page. so I said to myself: OK, perhaps they have just changed that tag therefore Google needs time to re-crawl that page and de-index following the no index tag. How long do you think it will take to don't see that page indexed? Do you think it will effect the whole website, as I suppose if you have that tag on your home page (the root domain) you will lose a lot of links' juice - it's totally unnatural a backlinks profile without links to a root domain? Cheers, Pierpaolo
Technical SEO | | madcow780 -
Google Reconsideration Request (Penguin) - Will Google give links to remove?
When Penguin v1 hit, our site took a hit for a single phrase (i.e. "widgets") due to the techniques our SEO company was using (network). We've since had those links cleaned up, and our rankings have not recovered. Our SEO company said they submitted a reconsideration request on our behalf, and that Google denied it and didn't provide which links we needed removed. Does Google list links that need removing if they are still not happy with your link profile?
Technical SEO | | crucialx0 -
Is there any evidence that using Google Site Search will help your ranking, speed of indexing, or traffic?
I am considering using Google Site Search on our new site. I was told... "We have also seen a bump in traffic for sites when using Google Site Search because Google indexes the site more often (they claim using the paid Google Site Search has no effect on search rankings but we have also seen bumps in rankings after using it so that may just be what they have to say legally)." Is there any evidence of this? Would you recommend using Google Site Search? Thanks David
Technical SEO | | DavidButler710 -
How can I get a listing of just the URLs that are indexed in Google
I know I can use the site: query to see all the pages I have indexed in Google, but I need a listing of just the URLs. We are doing a site re-platform and I want to make sure every URL in Google has a 301. Is there an easy way to just see the URLs that Google has indexed for a domain?
Technical SEO | | EvergladesDirect0 -
Getting Google to index new pages
I have a site, called SiteB that has 200 pages of new, unique content. I made a table of contents (TOC) page on SiteB that points to about 50 pages of SiteB content. I would like to get SiteB's TOC page crawled and indexed by Google, as well as all the pages it points to. I submitted the TOC to Pingler 24 hours ago and from the logs I see the Googlebot visited the TOC page but it did not crawl any of the 50 pages that are linked to from the TOC. I do not have a robots.txt file on SiteB. There are no robot meta tags (nofollow, noindex). There are no 'rel=nofollow' attributes on the links. Why would Google crawl the TOC (when I Pinglered it) but not crawl any of the links on that page? One other fact, and I don't know if this matters, but SiteB lives on a subdomain and the URLs contain numbers, like this: http://subdomain.domain.com/category/34404 Yes, I know that the number part is suboptimal from an SEO point of view. I'm working on that, too. But first wanted to figure out why Google isn't crawling the TOC. The site is new and so hasn't been penalized by Google. Thanks for any ideas...
Technical SEO | | scanlin0