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
-
Site migration/ CMS/domain site structure change-no access to search console
Hi everyone, We are migrating an old site under a bigger umbrella (our main domain). As mentioned in the title, We'll perform CMS migration, domain change, and site structure change. Now, the major problem is that we can't get into google search console for the old site. The site still has old GA code, so google search console verification using this method is not possible, also there is no way developers will be able to add GTM or edit DNS setting (not to bother you with the reason why). Now, my dilemma is : 1. Do we need access to old search console to notify Google about the domain name change or this could be done from our main site (old site will become a part of) search console 2. We are setting up 301 redirects from old to the new domain (not perfect 1:1 redirect ). Once migration is done does anything else needs to be done with the old domain (it will become obsolete)? 3.The main site, Site-map... Should I create a new sitemap with newly added pages or update the current one. 4. if you have anything else please add:) Thank you!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | bgvsiteadmin0 -
Ranking on google search
Hello Mozzers Moz On page grader shows A grade for the particular URL,but my page was not ranking on top 100 Google search. Any help is appreciated ,Thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | sobanadevi0 -
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 -
Is it dangerous to use "Fetch as Google" too much in Webmaster Tools?
I saw some people freaking out about this on some forums and thought I would ask. Are you aware of there being any downside to use "Fetch as Google" often? Is it a bad thing to do when you create a new page or blog post, for example?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | BlueLinkERP0 -
Monthly Searches from Google Keyword Planner
I've used Google Adwords, Google Analytics and competitors keywords to compile a master list. I'm now looking to evaluate metrics on the keywords / phrases / long tail phrases. My question is this ... Based on Googles use of Geo Targeting, would I be better to evaluate metrics (Avg. Monthly Searches, Competition, Avg CPC) based on United Kingdom or my local city (I only operate in my local city). I am looking to use the results to redesign my website. I will use the favorable keywords / phrases / long tail keywords to implement a new menu, new content page creation, articles, etc. Thanks Mark
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Mark_Ch0 -
What is the value of Google Crawling Dynamic URLS with NO SEO
Hi All I am Working on travel site for client where there are 1000's of product listing pages that are dynamically created. These pages are not SEO optimised and are just lists of products with no content other than the product details. There are no meta tags for title and description on the listings pages. You then click Find Out more to go to the full product details. There is no way to SEO these Dynamic pages This main product details has no content other than details and now meta tags. To help increase my google rankings for the rest of the site which is search optimised would it be better to block google from indexing these pages. Are these pages hurting my ability to improve rankings if my SEO of the content pages has been done to a good level with good unique Titles, descriptions and useful content thanks In advance John
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | ingageseo0 -
Why is Google Webmaster Tools reporting a massive increase in 404s?
Several weeks back, we launched a new website, replacing a legacy system moving it to a new server. With the site transition, webroke some of the old URLs, but it didn't seem to be too much concern. We blocked ones I knew should be blocked in robots.txt, 301 redirected as much duplicate data and used canonical tags as far as I could (which is still an ongoing process), and simply returned 404 for any others that should have never really been there. For the last months, I've been monitoring the 404s Google reports in Web Master Tootls (WMT) and while we had a few hundred due to the gradual removal duplicate data, I wasn't too concerned. I've been generating updated sitemaps for Google multiple times a week with any updated URLs. Then WMT started to report a massive increase in 404s, somewhere around 25,000 404s per day (making it impossible for me to keep up). The sitemap.xml has new URL only but it seems that Google still uses the old sitemap from before the launch. The reported sources of 404s (in WMT) don't exist anylonger. They all are coming from the old site. I attached a screenshot showing the drastic increase in 404s. What could possibly cause this problem? wmt-massive-404s.png
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | sonetseo0 -
Somthing weird in my Google Webmaster Tools Crawl Errors...
Hey, I recently (this past may) redesigned my e-commerce site from .asp to .php. I am trying to fix all the old pages with 301 redirects that didn't make it in the switch, but I keep getting weird pages coming up in GWT. I have about 400 pages under crawl errors that look like this "emailus.php?id=MD908070" I delete them and they come back. my site is http://www.moondoggieinc.com the id #'s are product #'s for products that are no longer on the site, but the site is .php now. They also do not show a sitemap they are linked in or any other page that they are linked from. Are these hurting me? and how do I get rid of them? Thanks! KristyO
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | KristyO0