URL Errors for SmartPhone in Google Search Console/Webmaster Tools
-
Howdy all,
In recent weeks I have seen a steady increase in the number of smartphone related url errors on Googles Search Console (formerly webmaster tools).
THe crawler appears to be searching for a /m/ or /mobile/ directory within the URLs. Why is it doing this? Any insight would be greatly appreciated. Unfortunately this is for an unresponsive site, would setting the viewport help stop the issue for know until my new responsive site is launched shortly.
Cheers fello Mozzers
Tim
-
Haha, you wrote this as I was writing my reply to you both below. Yup! That earlier Q&A is a great resource. Screaming Frog should give you insight into where the links might have gone bad. 301 redirection is always an option as well for the few links that may be causing issues. Cheers!
-
Have you tried running something like Screaming Frog to see if you can duplicate the 404s? http://www.screamingfrog.co.uk/broken-link-checker/ That might give you greater visibility into this. Beyond that I'd do Google searches on the various plugins you have running to see if they do something similar to that Yoast example regarding partially publishing draft content. It's likely that you'll find someone with a similar issue at some point in the past.
If you want greater insight from the community, post the URLs here and people will be able to investigate directly. Best of luck!
-
I have just found this post which seems to outline most of my issues.
See here. Although I am not sure it will help you or not Trenton. I am going to do a little Screaming Frog search to see if there is an errand link.
-
I too am using Yoast and still getting these troublesome errors on GSC. We also do a lots of draft posting, but for me the error is not solely restricted to an area of our site that uses wordpress, it happens globally to our site.
I have checked the sitemaps on both desktop and mobile and both are returning the same for me.
-
Looks exactly the same on my phone as it does on desktop. The pages coming up as 404s in GSC under Smartphone are NOT listed on this page-sitemap.xml page.
-
I am using Yoast but I am only using the Page sitemap, and it is the only one I have submitted for the affected sites. Again, this doesn't really explain why it's coming up under Smartphone and not Desktop. Also, Google does tell you where these are linking from, and it does say the sitemap page, but when i looked at the sitemap page, these pages are not listed. I am looking at them on my desktop though and not my smartphone. If I looked at the /page-sitemap.xml page on my phone would it look any different? :::quickly picks up his phone and tests it out:::
-
Without looking at the specific site in question my guess is that the draft is publishing some amount of its content to either a sitemap or other area of your site that is then prompting a crawl from Google. This is sometimes an issue with various plugins, for example Yoast was doing this with the attachment-sitemap.xml a while ago, see: https://wordpress.org/support/topic/sitemap-probelm (last comment).
Aside from files such as these, you could run a crawler like Screaming Frog or Xenu to help track down which locations might be pointing to the 404 pages. Cheers!
-
I'm seeing similar issues. I was going to post a question, but found this when I searched.
I'm using Wordpress and I have some theme pages that I have set as drafts, so that I can access them on my end, but the public would get a 404. In Google Search Console, under Desktop, none of these pages are coming up. But under Smartphone, somehow Google is finding these unpublished draft URLs as 404 Not Found errors.
My question is why is Google seeing these pages, and also why it's triggering on Smartphone only and not desktop. And my last question is the obvious one: how do I fix this!?
Thanks!
-
Hi Tim. Can you share the domain name that is experiencing these errors? If it's private, feel free to DM it.
Broadly, I'd look for any backlinks that are pointed at a missing /m/ or /mobile/ folder, sitemaps that are pointing at such, internal links that are doing likewise. If the site is completely new and unresponsive I'd do as you suggested yourself and throttle down the crawlers until you're ready to fully launch. Cheers!
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
-
Google Search Console Crawl Errors?
We are using Google Search Console to monitor Crawl Errors. It seems Google is listing errors that are not actual errors. For instance, it shows this as "Not found": https://tapgoods.com/products/tapgoods__8_ft_plastic_tables_11_available So the page does not exist, but we cannot find any pages linking to it. It has a tab that shows Linked From, but if I look at the source of those pages, the link is not there. In this case, it is showing the front page (listed twice, both for http and https). Also, one of the pages it shows as linking to the non-existant page above is a non-existant page. We marked all the errors as fixed last week and then this week they came up again. 2/3 are the same pages we marked as fixed last week. Is this an issue with Google Search Console? Are we getting penalized for a non existant issue?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | TapGoods0 -
URL Capitalization Inconsistencies Registering Duplicate Content Crawl Errors
Hello, I have a very large website that has a good amount of "Duplicate Content" issues according to MOZ. In reality though, it is not a problem with duplicate content, but rather a problem with URLs. For example: http://acme.com/product/features and http://acme.com/Product/Features both land on the same page, but MOZ is seeing them as separate pages, therefor assuming they are duplicates. We have recently implemented a solution to automatically de-captialize all characters in the URL, so when you type acme.com/Products, the URL will automatically change to acme.com/products – but MOZ continues to flag multiple "Duplicate Content" issues. I noticed that many of the links on the website still have the uppercase letters in the URL even though when clicked, the URL changes to all lower case. Could this be causing the issue? What is the best way to remove the "Duplicate Content" issues that are not actually duplicate content?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Scratch_MM0 -
Why would a domain show up in Webmaster Tools but not latest links?
I am going through links and trying to figure out what to disavow. I found a domain under "Who links the Most" I wanted to see what the exact link was and I can't find it when I download all links. Why would that be?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | EcommerceSite0 -
How do I add https version of site to Bing webmaster tools?
I could add my site to Google Webmaster tools with no problems, but when I try to add it in Bing webmaster tools it just redirects me to what I already have. Everything is staying the same but the switch from http to https. Anyone else experienced this? This is what I just received back from Bing and it doesn't seem right- I understand that you switched to the https version of your site and you're now trying to use the Site Move tool. However, in order to do this, you must verify the https version of your site first. You cannot do this because it just redirects you to the dashboard. We thank you for reporting this to us. We've investigated on this matter and can see that you're already put a redirect from the http to the https version of your site. We also checked the /BingSiteAuth.xml file and this also redirects to the https version. At this point, we suggest that you remove the current website (http version) that is verified through Bing Webmaster Tool and add your https domain. When done, use the Site Move tool. Thoughts?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | EcommerceSite1 -
Google: How to See URLs Blocked by Robots?
Google Webmaster Tools says we have 17K out of 34K URLs that are blocked by our Robots.txt file. How can I see the URLs that are being blocked? Here's our Robots.txt file. User-agent: * Disallow: /swish.cgi Disallow: /demo Disallow: /reviews/review.php/new/ Disallow: /cgi-audiobooksonline/sb/order.cgi Disallow: /cgi-audiobooksonline/sb/productsearch.cgi Disallow: /cgi-audiobooksonline/sb/billing.cgi Disallow: /cgi-audiobooksonline/sb/inv.cgi Disallow: /cgi-audiobooksonline/sb/new_options.cgi Disallow: /cgi-audiobooksonline/sb/registration.cgi Disallow: /cgi-audiobooksonline/sb/tellfriend.cgi Disallow: /*?gdftrk Sitemap: http://www.audiobooksonline.com/google-sitemap.xml
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | lbohen0 -
Google top results API / scraper?
Hi, Does anyone know of an API/scraper that would allow you to get the top N Google search results for a given query? Ideally the results would be "neutral" (no personalization, no localization, etc.) Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | anthematic0 -
URL Parameter is not available in website which was monitored by Google
I was checking URL parameters section over Google webmaster tools. Google have monitored following parameters and exclude it from crawling. utm_campaign utm_medium utm_source I have built URLs with following tool to track visits from vertical search engine like Google shopping and other comparison shopping engines. http://www.google.com/support/analytics/bin/answer.py?answer=55578 So, I am quite confuse to see over my data. Will Google consider external URLs which are available with above parameters or require to consist on live website? Note: I am asking for my eCommerce website. http://www.lampslightingandmore.com/
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | CommercePundit0 -
What on-page/site optimization techniques can I utilize to improve this site (http://www.paradisus.com/)?
I use a Search Engine Spider Simulator to analyze the homepage and I think my client is using black hat tactics such as cloaking. Am I right? Any recommendations on to improve the top navigation under Resorts pull down. Each of the 6 resorts listed are all part of the Paradisus brand, but each resort has their own sub domain.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Melia0
