Mobile Redirect - Cloaking/Sneaky?
-
Question since Google is somewhat vague on what they consider mobile "equivalent" content. This is the hand we're dealt with due to budget, no m.dot, etc, responsive/dynamic is on the roadmap but still a couple quarters away but, for now, here's the situation.
We have two sets of content and experiences, one for desktop and one for mobile. The problem is that desktop content does not = mobile content. The layout, user experience, images and copy aren't the same across both versions - they are not dramatically different but not identical. In many cases, no mobile equivalent exists.
Dev wants to redirect visitors who find the desktop version in mobile search to the equivalent mobile experience, when it exists, when it doesn't they want to redirect to the mobile homepage - which really isn't a homepage it's an unfiltered view of the content. Yeah we have push state in place for the mobile version etc.
My concern is that Google will look at this as cloaking, maybe not in the cases where there's a near equivalent piece of content, but definitely when we're redirecting to the "homepage". Not to mention this isn't a great user experience and will impact conversion/engagement metrics which are likely factors Google's algorithm considers.
What's the MOZ Community say about this? Cloaking or Not and Why?
Thanks!
-
Thomas
great info above, quick follow up question for you.....I have always wonder why is Google using the "640px" in the ?
many people have been asking the question lately if 640px is an old example or is it the required size? (phones are larger nowaway)the website I manage are non-responsive ocated in a /mobile/ folder such as: http://www.example.com/mobile/page1
and our mobile size cut off is actually 1023px..... should we be using 640 or 1023px in the rel="alternate" tag?
thank you! -
Thanks Thomas, I've pushed back and said no, part of my original SEO requirement was to eliminate the blanket redirect but there's always pushback and wanted to have more ammo in my back pocket.
Definitely will be implementing vary http header, etc when we do have mobile version. I did not know about the apex/ CNAME/ Aname, I appreciate the tip.
-
"Dev wants to redirect visitors who find the desktop version in mobile search to the equivalent mobile experience, when it exists, when it doesn't they want to redirect to the mobile homepage - which really isn't a homepage it's an unfiltered view of the content. Yeah we have push state in place for the mobile version etc."
Tell your developer absolutely not and create the multiple versions of the site then redirect them properly if he does what is stated below your site will lose visitors and Google will be less than happy.
I strongly suggest that you tell him no. The only thing he has right is redirect to the mobile version if it exists. If it does not exist do not redirect to the homepage or any page UNLESS IT IS THE mobile version of that original page.
If they find it via search Google has already deemed it not mobile friendly any URLs that are up for debate place through this: https://varvy.com/mobile/ and you will have your answer brother their mobile friendly or not
if there is not a valid mobile version you should not force the mobile version to be used it will not benefit you it will hurt you in fact.
-
if there is not a valid mobile version you should not force the mobile version to be used it will not benefit you it will hurt you in fact. when you do have a 100% mobile friendly version you can utilize the tactics below
Different methods apex records or Aname records /Cname flattening whatever you want to call it can do the trick as well as see below.
Cname flattening
https://support.cloudflare.com/hc/en-us/articles/200168336-About-CloudFlare-Mobile-Redirect
"All mobile traffic to
example.com
(the root/zone apex) andwww.example.com
is redirected to the mobile-optimized home page. Those records (root and www) must have CloudFlare's performance service enabled ("orange cloud" in the DNS Settings) for the redirect to be active."Add
https://varvy.com/mobile/vary-user-agent.html
Vary: User-Agent
Desktop page
Mobile 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
-
Redirecting from https to http - will pass whole link juice to new http website pages?
Hi making permanent 301 redirection from https to http - will pass whole link juice to new http website pages?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | Aman_1230 -
All pages going through 302 redirect - bad?
So, our web development company did something I don't agree with and I need a second opinion. Most of our pages are statically cached (the CMS creates .html files), which is required because of our traffic volume. To get geotargeting to work, they've set up every page to 302 redirect to a geodetection script, and back to the geotargeted version of the page. Eg: www.example.com/category 302 redirects to www.example.com/geodetect.hp?ip=ip_address. Then that page 302 redirects back to either www.example.com/category, or www.example.com/geo/category for the geo-targeted version. **So all of our pages - thousands - go through a double 302 redirect. It's fairly invisible to the user, and 302 is more appropriate than 301 in this case, but it really worries me. I've done lots of research and can't find anything specifically saying this is bad, but I can't imagine Google being happy with this. ** Thoughts? Is this bad for SEO? Is there a better way (keeping in mind all of our files are statically generated)? Is this perfectly fine?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | dholowiski0 -
Redirecting an image url to a more SEO friendly image url
We are currently trying to find the best way of making the images on one of our sites more SEO friendly, the easiest way for us would be to redirect the image URL to a more SEO friendly image URL. For example: http://www.website.com/default/cache/file/F8325DA-0A9A-437F-B5D0A4255A066261_medium.jpg redirects to http://www.website.com/default/cache/file/spiral-staircase.jpg Would Google frown upon this as it's saying the image is one thing and then points the user somewhere else?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | RedAntSolutions0 -
Is there such thing as white hat cloaking?
We are near the end of a site redesign and come to find out its in javascript and not engine friendly. Our IT teams fix to this is show crawlable content to googlebot and others through the user agents. I told them this is cloaking and I'm not comfortable with this. They said after doing research, if the content is pretty much the same, it is an acceptable way to cloak. About 90% of the content will be the same between the "regular user" and content served to googlebot. Does anyone have any experience with this, are there any recent articles or any best practices on this? Thanks!
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | CHECOM0 -
Redirecting doesn't rank on google
We are redirecting our artist's official website to copenhagenbeta.dk. We have two artists (Nik & Jay and Burhan G) that top ranks on Google (first on page 1), but one of them (Lukas Graham) doesn't rank at all. We use the same procedure with all artists. http://copenhagenbeta.dk/index.php?option=com_artistdetail&task=biography&type=overview&id=49 Doesn't rank but the old artist page still does. Is it the old page that tricks Google to think that this is the active page for the artist?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | Morten_Hjort0 -
Opportunity for Redirect?
Hi there! I've got a site selling outdoor jackets and remembered about a friend's old business website (that also sold outdoor jackets) which is now dormant. He's kindly agreed to let me host a splash page on his old domain, or to use the domain to redirect. I wasn't sure if Google looked negatively at redirects, so I suggested the page host option? What do you think? I guess what it would mean is for us to supply our name server details to him, and then ask him to put these into his DNS settings. If we were to host a page in this way, would we add a page of relevant content, a simple link? Would this pull the link juice through? Any help with this would be greatly appreciated. Matt
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | Macinasac0 -
Would linking out to a gambling/casino site, harm my site and the other sites it links out to?
I have been emailed asking if I sell links on one of my sites. The person wants to link out to slotsofvegas[dot]com or similar. Should I be concerned about linking out to this and does it reduce the link value to any of the other sites that the site links out to? Thanks, Mark
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | Markus1111