Can you help with some concerns over mobile site in SERPS
-
Hi Guys
I wonder if you can put me right on this query please?
We have a mobile version of our site, on an m. domain. it is actually http://m.uniquemagazines.co.uk.
I have created a mobile sitemap, and added the sitemap reference to the robots.txt file. I have setup the site in web master tools, and submitted the sitemap to web master tools. The sitemap can be found at http://m.uniquemagazines.co.uk/sitemap.xml. This is an index file, which in turn links to 3 sitemaps, one for pages, one for product pages and one for category pages.
I have not blocked any crawlers in the robots.txt file.
My query is we have some products showing up in the SERPS with both the mobile and normal website.
Secondly, in web master tools I am told that our mobile sitemap contains 3675 submitted URLs. However, it states under the WEB banner that 3675 submitted, and 3675 indexed. But under MOBILE it states 3675 submitted, none indexed...
I will attempt to attach a screenshot from WMT of this.
Do you have any ideas what has gone wrong here? is it wrong, or is this what you would expect to see?
Many thanks
Paul
-
Just checked google analytics, and the mobile site is getting traffic from google, yahoo and ask engines. So inbound traffic is coming through. And it is converting to sales, which is the important bit.
I will update the DTD, and monitor it over the next few days/weeks and see what happens.
Thanks for all your help Mike.
-
That certainly can't hurt either.
Seems to me these pages aren't actually having any trouble showing up in the mobile index, but GWT for whatever reason isn't associating them with your mobile sitemap.
I'd also take a look at inbound organic search traffic from mobile users landing on these pages. If they're pulling traffic, I'd assume the GWT thing is a bug/delay.
-
That's great Mike, thanks for your help.
I have also found this webmaster guideline
" Pages we determine aren't viewable on a mobile phone won't be included in our mobile site index (although they may be included in the regular web index). This determination is based on a variety of factors, one of which is the "DTD (Doc Type Definition)" declaration. Check that your mobile-friendly URLs' DTD declaration is in an appropriate mobile format such as XHTML Mobile or Compact HTML (3). If it's in a compatible format, the page is eligible for the mobile search index"
This links through to http://support.google.com/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=72462
I think I should change the DTD to a mobile friendly one and see if that helps.
-
Not a silly question at all, they've moved the mobile search a few times and now it seems the only way to get at it is:
- Via tools like this http://www.mobilemoxie.com/site-analysis/mobile-seo/
- By setting your user agent to iPhone/similar with the User Agent Switcher for Firefox (or similar) - then simply navigating to Google.com and running your searches
- With an actual smartphone (slowest method IMO)
For spot-checking single URLs, I'm using the info: operator (the site: operator will return an index count for the full subdomain/directory, info: is for single URLs).
Best,
Mike -
Thanks Mike
Silly question, but how to you check specifically the google mobile index? Is this just by doing a site:m.uniquemagazines.co.uk search in a mobile device?
Thanks
Paul
-
Hi Paul,
Sorry, yeah - indexation in the mobile specific index looks better for the pages in the sitemap.
An alternative approach to guiding Google's indexation of your mobile content is found here: https://developers.google.com/webmasters/smartphone-sites/details (scroll down to "Annotations in Sitemaps")
The initial lack of rel=canonical tags is likely part of the problem. This creation of rel=alternate annotations in your desktop sitemap may be a way to help sort it.
That's the best I've got right now, after some internal discussion with our Q&A team. Not sure why GWT showing no pages indexed of your Mobile sitemap, when clearly these pages are in the mobile index.
I'd probably look to analytics at this point - to determine whether/how many of your mobile pages are getting traffic from G mobile searches. This could just be a lag in GWT data, whereas the actual index is cleaning up nicely.
Best,
Mike -
Thanks Mike
I must admit I have done so much reading, to the point of confusing myself totally. When you say no pages are indexed to you mean in the mobile index?
When I do a search on normal google, site:m.uniquemagazines.co.uk it tells me that 5480 pages are indexed. Now, I am hoping this is because initially we didn't have a rel=canonical on the mobile content and so it has ended up being listed in normal serps as duplicate.
This may be why the m.uniquemagazines.co.uk domain is not indexed in the mobile serp index.
I am assuming that in web master tools our mobile site should show a number for indexed pages next to the Mobile submitted section.
Many thanks for your help
Paul
-
Hi Paul,
I'm a bit stumped here. I spot checked a bunch of mobile URLs from your sitemaps, and none of them are currently indexed by Google.
I've put this question out to all other Moz and associates who handle Q&A forums to see if there's someone who can share some insight here.
I don't see anything wrong with your mobile sitemaps, and the pages I checked that were not indexed are indeed loading properly with mobile content. So I'm frankly not sure what's preventing Google from indexing these pages.
Just wanted to post this response to let you know I've raised your question to the attention of our Q&A people, hopefully someone has some insight to share.
-Mike
-
Wow, so many responses
Just as an update I have implemented canonical and alternate tags on the desktop and mobile site to clarify to google et al that the mobile site is the same content as desktop, just an alternate delivery.
Will see what that does for me.
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
-
Site's IP showing WMT 'Links to My Site'
I have been going through, disavowing spam links in WMT and one of my biggest referral sources is our own IP address. Site: Covers.com
Technical SEO | | evansluke
IP: 208.68.0.72 We have recently fixed a number of 302 redirects, but the number of links actually seems to be increasing. Is this something I should ignore / disavow / fix using a redirect?0 -
301 Redirect Help
How would you 301 redirect and entire folder to a specific file within the same domain? Scenario www.domain.com/folder to www.domain.com/file.html Thanks for your Input...
Technical SEO | | dhidalgo11 -
One site per location or all under and umbrella site?
I am working on a project where we are re-branding lots (100+) existing local business under one national brand. I am wondering what we should do with their existing websites, they are generally fairly poor and will need re-designing to match the new brand but may have some residual links? 301 redirect the URL to the national site, e.g. nationalsite.com/localbusinessA? If so what should I look out for? Do I need to specifically redirect any pages that have links to them to the same pages on the new site? Or should I give them a new standalone website that they link back to the national brand site? More than likely this will be hosted on the same server and CMS as the main site just the URL will remain Do I need to make sure that any old URL's that had links to them are 301'd to the new pages? Many thanks for you advice.
Technical SEO | | BadgerToo0 -
Mobile Site Domain/URL Structure
We are currently building a mobile optimised version of our main website and I had some questions with regard to SEO. 1. Is it best to structure the domain as: m.yourdomain.com yourdomain/m 2. It is correct to place rel="cannonical" on the mobile pages and to have only the main site indexed? Thanks in advance and links or books on mobile seo you can direct me to that would be greatly appreciated. Phil
Technical SEO | | Phily0 -
What tool can i use to get the true speed of my site
hi, i am trying to get the true speed of my site. i want to know how fast www.in2town.co.uk is but the tools that i am using are giving me different readings. http://tools.pingdom.com/fpt/#!/DkHoNWmZh/www.in2town.co.uk says the speed is 1.03s http://gtmetrix.com/reports/www.in2town.co.uk/i4EMDk34 says my speed is 2.25s and http://www.vertain.com/m.q?req=cstr&reqid=dAv79lt8 says it is 4.36s so as you can see i am confused. I am trying to get the site as fast as possible, but need to know what the correct speed is so i can work on things that need changing to make it faster. can anyone also let me know what speed i should be working for. many thanks
Technical SEO | | ClaireH-1848860 -
Help internet archive
Hi can anyone help me. I am trying to track information from sites. I am at the moment got solicitiors involved ref trade mark of a name and we are trying to prove that this name was being used before the trade mark application. A company has gone ahead with a trade mark in full knowledge that this is a common name and we have been told if we can prove that the name was being used before it was registered then we can knock out the trade mark. We have been told there is an internet archive but i cannot find one, can anyone please let me know how i can look at sites from before 2010 and see about if they were using this word to help our case.
Technical SEO | | ClaireH-1848860 -
Why does my site have a PageRank of 0?
My site (www.onemedical.com) has a PageRank of 0, and I can't figure out why. We did a major site update about a year ago, and moved the site from .md to .com about 9 months ago. We are crawled by Google and rank on the first page for many of our top keywords. We have a MozRank of 4.59. I figured this is something that would just take time to work out of the system, but nothing seems to change while we patiently wait. One more thing to note - when a user comes to the homepage (city selector) and selects their region they will then be cookied and directed to their relevant city site on subsequent visits. But even our city-specific pages (ie www.onemedical.com/sf) have pageranks of 0. My management team keeps asking me about this and I suspect there is something silly that we keep overlooking...but for the life of me, can't figure it out. Any help would be appreciated.
Technical SEO | | OneMedical0