When Mobile and Desktop sites have the same page URLs, how should I handle the 'View Desktop Site' link on a mobile site to ensure a smooth crawl?
-
We're about to roll out a mobile site. The mobile and desktop URLs are the same. User Agent determines whether you see the desktop or mobile version of the site. At the bottom of the page is a 'View Desktop Site' link that will present the desktop version of the site to mobile user agents when clicked.
I'm concerned that when the mobile crawler crawls our site it will crawl both our entire mobile site, then click 'View Desktop Site' and crawl our entire desktop site as well. Since mobile and desktop URLs are the same, the mobile crawler will end up crawling both mobile and desktop versions of each URL. Any tips on what we can do to make sure the mobile crawler either doesn't access the desktop site, or that we can let it know what is the mobile version of the page?
We could simply not show the 'View Desktop Site' to the mobile crawler, but I'm interested to hear if others have encountered this issue and have any other recommended ways for handling it. Thanks!
-
Hi,
Google's advice on this configuration is to use the "Vary HTTP header" to let the Google bot know that the same url is used for mobile/desktop. See also: https://developers.google.com/webmasters/mobile-sites/mobile-seo/configurations/dynamic-serving?hl=en . While Google strongly recommends responsive design - this option is also valid. Matt Cuts says the same in this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=va6qtaiZRHg (it starts with all the caching stuff, the part which might be of interest to you starts at 3:38)
Hope this clarifies,
Dirk
-
When the crawler goes to the desktop site the user agent should change dynamically and it will see that the user agent is set to non-mobile. Be sure to check it out here: https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/mobile-friendly/
while responsive design fundamentals can be found here: https://developers.google.com/web/fundamentals/layouts/rwd-fundamentals/. Cheers!
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
-
Weird Site is linking to our site and links appears to be broken
I have got a lot of weird links indexed from this page: http://kzs.uere.info/files/images/dining-table-and-2-upholstered-chairs.html When clicking the link it shows 404. Also, the spam score is huge. What do you guys suggest to do with this?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Miniorek
Could it be done by somebody to get our rankings down or domain penalized? Best Regards
Mike & Alex0 -
Url structure on product pages - Should we apply canonicalized links in breadcrumbs or entry folders
We have products in the that go into mulitiple categories on our e-commerce site. But of course, each product is only canonicalized to one category. My question is: what should the breadcrumbs look like when users access a product from a non-canonicalized/primary category ?Should we apply canonicalized links in breadcrumbs or entry folders? For example: Let´s say we have product called "glacier hiking in the alps". It is in two categories; 1) glacier hiking 2) mountain tours. And is canonicalized to the glacier hiking category. If a user accesses it from the mountain tours category, should the url/breadcrumbs look like this: www.example.com/glacier-hiking/glacier-hiking-in-the-alps (because that is the canonicalized version) Or should it look like like this: www.example.com/mountain-tours/glacier-hiking-in-the-alps (because that is where the user came from) Thanks in advance!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | guidetoiceland0 -
How would you handle these pages? Should they be indexed?
If a site has about 100 pages offering specific discounts for employees at various companies, for example... mysite.com/discounts/target mysite.com/discounts/kohls mysite.com/discounts/jcpenney and all these pages are nearly 100% duplicates, how would you handle them? My recommendation to my client was to use noindex, follow. These pages tend to receive backlinks from the actual companies receiving the discounts, so obviously they are valuable from a linking standpoint. But say the content is nearly identical between each page; should they be indexed? Is there any value for someone at Kohl's, for example, to be able to find this landing page in the search results? Here is a live example of what I am talking about: https://www.google.com/search?num=100&safe=active&rlz=1C1WPZB_enUS735US735&q=site%3Ahttps%3A%2F%2Fpoi8.petinsurance.com%2Fbenefits%2F&oq=site%3Ahttps%3A%2F%2Fpoi8.petinsurance.com%2Fbenefits%2F&gs_l=serp.3...7812.8453.0.8643.6.6.0.0.0.0.174.646.3j3.6.0....0...1c.1.64.serp..0.5.586...0j35i39k1j0i131k1j0i67k1j0i131i67k1j0i131i46k1j46i131k1j0i20k1j0i10i3k1.RyIhsU0Yz4E
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | FPD_NYC0 -
Large number of pages crawled.
My campaign for printlabelandmail.com says that seomoz has crawled 619 pages. My site, however, only has a little over 250 pages. Where are these extra pages? I did recently relaunched my website with wordpress. I was using Dreamweaver before. I thought I deleted all the old pages. Could these extra pages be old pages from the site prior to my relaunch? I hope my question makes sense. Any insights would be helpful. Thanks! Andrea
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | JimDirectMailCoach0 -
How can Google index a page that it can't crawl completely?
I recently posted a question regarding a product page that appeared to have no content. [http://www.seomoz.org/q/why-is-ose-showing-now-data-for-this-url] What puzzles me is that this page got indexed anyway. Was it indexed based on Google knowing that there was once content on the page? Was it indexed based on the trust level of our root domain? What are your thoughts? I'm asking not only because I don't know the answer, but because I know the argument is going to be made that if Google indexed the page then it must have been crawlable...therefore we didn't really have a crawlability problem. Why Google index a page it can't crawl?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | danatanseo0 -
Long term strategy to retain link 'goodness', I need some help!
Hi, I have a few questions around the best approach to retain as much link juice / authority from transitioning multiple domains into 1 single domain over the next year or so. I have 2 similar websites (www.brandA.co.uk and www.brandB.co.uk) which I need to transition to a new website (www.brandC.co.uk) over the next 2 years. Both A&B are established and have there own brand value, brand C will be a new website. I need to start introducing the brand from website C onto A&B straight away and then eventually drop the brands from A&B and just be left with C. One idea I am considering is: www.brandA.co.uk becomes brandA.brandC.co.uk (brandA sits as a subdomain on brandC website) Ultimately over time I would drop the subdomain (brandA) and just be left with www.brandC.co.uk The other option is: www.brandA.co.uk becomes brandC.co.uk/brandA...with the same ultimate aim as above. In both above case the same would be done for brandB, either becoming a subdomain of a folder on brandC website What I need to know is what is the best way to first pass any SEO goodness from the websites for brandA and brandB to the intermediate solution of either brandA.brandC.co.uk or brandC.co.uk/brandA (I see this intermediate solution being in place for approx 2 years). And then how to transition the intermediate solution into just having brandC.co.uk Which solution will aid growing the SEO goodness on the final brandC.co.uk website? Does google see subdomains as part of the main domain and thus the main domain will benefit from any links going to the subdomain or is it better to always use /folders as google sees these as more part of one website? ...or is there another option that I haven't considered? I know it's rater confusing so please give me a shout if you want anymore info. Thanks James
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | cewe0 -
Lots of city pages - How do I ensure we don't get penalized
We are planning on having a job posting page for each city that we are looking to hire new CFO partners in. But, the problem is, we have LOTS of locations. I was wondering what would be the best way to have similar content on each page (since the job description and requirements are the same for each job posting) without being hit by Google for having duplicate content? One of the main reasons we have decided to have location based pages is that we have noticed visitors to our site are searching for "cfo job in [location] but we notice that most of these visitors then leave. We believe it to be because the pages they land on make no mention of the location that they were looking for and is a little incongruent with what they were expecting. We are looking to use the following URLs and TItle/Description as an example: | http://careers.b2bcfo.com/cfo-jobs/Alabama/Birmingham | CFO Careers in Birmingham, AL | | Are you looking for a CFO Career in Birmingham, Alabama ? We're looking for partners there. Apply today! | | Any advice you have for this would be greatly appreciated. Thank you.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | B2B.CFO0 -
Pages un-indexed in my site
My current website www.energyacuity.com has had most pages indexed for more than a year. However, I tried cache a few of the pages, and it looks the only one that is now indexed by Goggle is the homepage. Any thoughts on why this is happening?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | abernatj0