Moz Q&A is closed.
After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.
My Website No Longer Appears in Mobile Google Search but Does in Desktop...Why Is This?
-
For a long time my website has appeared in both desktop and mobile search in Google. Yet recently it has stopped appearing in mobile yet still on desktop. Any ideas why this is happening and how to rectify it please? Many Thanks.
-
Thanks very much Kristina. I will look into that.
-
Hi Travis,
Thanks for the reply. It actually isn't that site lol. It's ranking well at the moment on both mobile and normal search. But I will look into those factors you have mentioned, so thanks again for that.
It is actually a clients site. Until very recently it was showing on mobile and desktop in 3rd position on page 1. But has disappeared in mobile for some reason. Nothing has been done to the site to cause it. Any ideas why it would suddenly happen?
-
Google has been threatening to rank sites lower in mobile search results if they're not optimized for the mobile experience for awhile. Any chance this is the case? Look at your site and other sites that rank for the keywords in question - are the other sites serving up a better user experience?
-
I'm laboring under the apprehension that you mean the site you listed in your profile. If that is the case, based upon what I've seen - the site isn't as mobile-friendly as it could be. I would recommend looking into responsive design.
What has likely happened is your content was pretty good for queries on mobile devices, up until recently. Competitors are likely serving up content that's 'mobile-friendlier' than yours in some way. That could mean anything from faster page load speeds to actual dedicated adaptive or responsive sites have started crowding the SERPs.
However, there are more pressing concerns that can be remedied now. The www and non-www version of the site is thoroughly indexed. If there's been a change to the .htaccess file, it would be a good idea to revisit it - the sooner the better.
Also, my crawler is picking up some 500 errors in the tag and category folders. Finally, it appears there is some weirdness happening with the /log-out page. It would be best to noindex/nofollow that page and/or block it with robots.txt. It appears to be sapping crawl budget.
So I suppose:
- Look into the duplicate content issue.
- Fix crawlability issues.
If you would like, I can share a Google Sheets copy of the crawl - free of charge. Just message me from my profile. Hopefully this has been helpful.
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
-
Safari and IE killing our mobile ranking
My client's website does fairly well on mobile in a Google Search. So one day, my client is in a staff meeting and everyone does on search on their phones. The client’s website is nowhere on the 1st three pages. I get a call asking why. I tell the client that Google has maybe as high as 90% market share on mobile. Of course, their phones have the factory installed Safari and IE. Client says lots of people don’t change the factory settings on mobile . Question: How do we rate higher on lesser search engines?
Algorithm Updates | | jgodwin0 -
Do sub-domain visits do not count for website?
It's a common understanding that Google treats sub-domains as different websites. Does that mean visits of sub-domain do not impact website in-terms of ranking or visibility or reputation at Google?
Algorithm Updates | | vtmoz0 -
Does Google use dateModified or date Published in its SERPs?
I was curious as to the prioritization of dateCreated / datePublished and dateModified in our microdata and how it affects google search results. I have read some entries online that say Google prioritizes dateModified in SERPs, but others that claim they prioritize datePublished or dateCreated. Do you know (or could you point me to some resources) as to whether Google uses dateModified or date Published in its SERPs? Thanks!
Algorithm Updates | | Parse.ly0 -
Deindexed from Google images Sep17th
We have a travel website that has been ranked in Google for 12-14years. The site produces original images with branding on them and have been for years ranking well. There's been no site changes. We have a Moz spamscore 1/17 and Domain Authority 59. Sep 17th all our images just disappeared from Google Image Search. Even searching for our domain with keyword photo results in nothing. I've checked our Search console and no email from Google and I see no postings on Moz and others relating to search algo changes with Images. I'm at a loss here.. does anyone have some advice?
Algorithm Updates | | danta2 -
Can I have the same item description on Amazon, eBay and my website?
Hi guys, After looking on the Internet and reading the Learn SEO section on this site, I've realised that Google doesn't like duplicate content and penalises it, whether that's duplication on your own site or of another site's content. We are an online retailer currently selling on different platforms including Amazon, eBay and our own ecommerce webstore. Is it okay to have the same item description (i.e. main page copy) on each of these sites, or will our search rankings get negatively impacted? Thank you in advance, I have researched on this issue also but I couldn't find a concrete answer. Tanay
Algorithm Updates | | goforgreen0 -
Proper Way To Submit A Reconsideration Request To Google
Hello, In previous posts, I was speaking about how we were penalized by Google for unnatural links. Basically 50,000 our of our 58,000 links were coming from 4-5 sites with the same exact anchor text and img alt tags. This obviously was causing our issues. Needless to say, I wen through the complete link profile to determine that all of the links besides this were of natrural origins. My question here is what is the accepted protocol of submitting a reinclusion request; For example, how long should it be? Should I disclose that I was in fact using paid links, and now that I removed (or at least nofollowed) them? I want to make sure that the request as good as it should so I can get our rankings up in a timely manner. Also, how long until the request is typically aknowledged? Thanks
Algorithm Updates | | BestOdds0 -
Stop google indexing CDN pages
Just when I thought I'd seen it all, google hits me with another nasty surprise! I have a CDN to deliver images, js and css to visitors around the world. I have no links to static HTML pages on the site, as far as I can tell, but someone else may have - perhaps a scraper site? Google has decided the static pages they were able to access through the CDN have more value than my real pages, and they seem to be slowly replacing my pages in the index with the static pages. Anyone got an idea on how to stop that? Obviously, I have no access to the static area, because it is in the CDN, so there is no way I know of that I can have a robots file there. It could be that I have to trash the CDN and change it to only allow the image directory, and maybe set up a separate CDN subdomain for content that only contains the JS and CSS? Have you seen this problem and beat it? (Of course the next thing is Roger might look at google results and start crawling them too, LOL) P.S. The reason I am not asking this question in the google forums is that others have asked this question many times and nobody at google has bothered to answer, over the past 5 months, and nobody who did try, gave an answer that was remotely useful. So I'm not really hopeful of anyone here having a solution either, but I expect this is my best bet because you guys are always willing to try.
Algorithm Updates | | loopyal0 -
Top 5 most optimized websites
Throwing this question out to the community but was wondering if anyone can direct me on how I can find the top 5 or 10 ten sites that have been most optimized for search engines. Meaning which web sites have the best reputation when it comes to website optimization for search engines or is there a resource where I can read about websites that have been ranked as the best when it comes to following best practices and have constantly ranked well within their industry? Figured it's always a good idea to learn from the best by looking at what they are doing. Thank you.
Algorithm Updates | | DRTBA2