Mobile Theme Switching
-
Hi -
wondering what one should do with a mobile theme in relationship to Google. We are using wordpress and then a plugin that detects whether or not the user is on a mobile device. Should you no-follow the mobile theme since it is effectively the same content as the main site? Or just leave it be and not worry about it.
Thanks!
-
We have been using the WordPress mobile pack plugin (http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/wordpress-mobile-pack/). We have been using the WordPress mobile plugin and it’s possible to set as a sub domain m.site.com, sub directory site.com/m, different URL site.mobi / or same URL but the User agent switches the WordPress theme being used.
In theory if the content is slightly different it would be better to use a sub directory rather than a different domain, and where the content it the same the same URL could be the best answer, but haven’t found a definitive answer on that. It also seems from google’s how to go mobile site that mobile pages can have the same Meta information and do not require a canonical link. http://www.howtogomo.com
I think references to googlebot-mobile are for how google crawls content for feature phones e.g. wap pages, but not sure if this applies to googlebot-for-smartphones which is still quite new and it’s possible to set as a sub domain m.site.com, sub directory site.com/m, different URL site.mobi / or same URL but the User agent switches the WordPress theme being used.
Thanks!
-
Leeg,
First, Good question. Second, what plug-in are you using?
After digesting your question, I went and looked at several of the plug ins for mobile that are avail for WP. The question is does the plugin serve up a separate page for mobile that has a subdomain different from what your site is? So, as it reconfigs the page for mobile, does it also in some way change the url to a mobile url like m.yoursite.com?(This is a best practice according to Matt Cutts)
From reading about one of them it states it can detect the "Googlebot-Mobile" so, I am assuming it is serving up this as the user agent and not the "Googlebot" as user agent. If this is so, then you should not have a problem with content being considered duplicate.
If there is nothing in the literature, I would ask the help desk depending on which plug in you are using.
Hope this helps.
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
-
My client is using a mobile template for their local pages and the Google search console is reporting thousands of duplicate titles/meta descriptions
So my client has 2000+ different store locations. Each location has the standard desktop location and my client opted for a corresponding mobile template for each location. Now the Google search console is reporting thousands of duplicate titles/meta descriptions. However this is only because the mobile template and desktop store pages are using the exact same title/meta description tag. Is Google penalizing my client for this? Would it be worth it to update the mobile template title/meta description tags?
Technical SEO | | RosemaryB0 -
Why has google stopped showing one domain and switching to showing another that points to the same website?
My client has a website here: http://www.savannahchiropractic.com/ The site ranked really well for searches for the term "savannah chiroprtactor". Sometime last week (April 21 mobilegeddon?) the site slipped in rankings, but reappeared under the domain name: "www.whitemarshchiropractic.com" Both URLs go to the exact same site. and I don't even think that the whitemarshchripractic.com site is a redirect. I'm not sure how it's setup, but it's definitely not a duplicate site. The ranking is still lower than the savannahchiropractic.com site, but now appears. Anyone have any insights on this?
Technical SEO | | aj6130 -
Mobile & desktop pages
I have a mobile site (m.example.com) and a desktop site (example.com). I want search engines to know that for every desktop page there is a mobile equivalent. To do this I insert a rel=alternate on the desktop pages to the mobile equivalent. On the mobile pages I insert a rel=canonical to it's equivalent desktop page. So far so good BUT: Almost every desktop page has 4 or 5 copies (duplicate content). I get rid of this issue by using the rel=canonical to the source page. Still no problem here. But what happens if I insert a rel=alternate to the mobile equivalent on every copy of the source page? I know it sounds stupid but the system doesn't allow me to insert a rel=alternate on just one page. It's all or nothing! My question: Does Google ignore the rel=alternate on the duplicate pages but keeps understanding the link between the desktop source page & mobile page ? Or should I avoid this scenario? Many Thanks Pieter
Technical SEO | | Humix0 -
Will there be an SEO impact if I switch my rich snippets from reviews to votes?
So, we currently have rich snippets showing for reviews on our site. We've made some new product pages that have reviews on them, but they are hidden behind a tab. Because of this our rich snippets haven't been showing in the serps, so we've been looking for a way to get them showing for these new pages. What we've found is that we can change the rich snippets from reviews to votes, which will show an aggregate score on the page, and this will get the snippets appearing in serps again as votes. What we're concerned about is, if we make this change to these new pages, they will automatically change everything on our review pages and all snippets on our sites will change from reviews to votes (not just the new pages). What we want to know is, if we make this change do you think that we may see a negative seo impact (aside from maybe having a lower CTR)? Thanks!
Technical SEO | | davo230 -
SEO for mobile
Hey everyone! I had just finished building my first mobile website and i wanna focus on SEO for mobile search. Now, since there is a redirection once a visitor enter to the web domain to the mobile site automatically (e.g. sample.com to m.sample.com). Question is: Where should i refer my back links to to improve my ranking on mobile result page? Would love for some help..
Technical SEO | | Tit0 -
Mobile Google Not Indexing Mobile Website
Google currently does not index our mobile website. It has the WWW website in it's index. When a user from a mobile phone clicks on a mobile search result for WWW we redirect them to our mobile website. This is posing problems for us as our mobile website is a fraction of the # of pages/sections as our WWW. So for example, mobile search results show that we have a "careers" section; but that's not the case for the mobile website. As a result a user gets a 404. How do we force mobile Google to index our mobile website instead of our WWW?
Technical SEO | | RBA0 -
Prevent mobile site from appearing in the sitelinks of desktop search
Hi, IWe have this mobile page that keeps on appearing in the google search. I even try to put it in the robots.txt to disallow the crawler but still it keeps on popping on the search results. How can I prevent it from displaying?
Technical SEO | | shebinhassan0 -
Does creating a mobile site in html5 create duplicate content?
We are creating a mobile site in html5 to serve smartphones only. On a seperate domain, m.example.com. From what I have read Google treats smartphones as desktops due to thier advanced web browser capabilities. So no need to bother with googlebot.mobile right? Googlebot should index the site once I create a normal sitemap.xml. My concern is that the mobile site pulls the same content as the main site which is already indexed. Would this not create duplicate content?
Technical SEO | | sfseo0