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
-
What would cause a major drop in ranking for (images) on both desk top and mobile? Web rankings are holding OK?
Sometime between Nov 8th and Nov 11th are rankings on Google for images dropped substantially. Our web rankings are holding OK. any idea!
Technical SEO | | OCFurniture0 -
Why can't google mobile friendly test access my website?
getting the following error when trying to use google mobile friendly tool: "page cannot be reached. This could be because the page is unavailable or blocked by robots.txt" I don't have anything blocked by robots.txt or robots tag. i also manage to render my pages on google search console's fetch and render....so what can be the reason that the tool can't access my website? Also...the mobile usability report on the search console works but reports very little, and the google speed test also doesnt work... Any ideas to what is the reason and how to fix this? LEARN MOREDetailsUser agentGooglebot smartphone
Technical SEO | | Nadav_W0 -
What do I need to do for HTTPS switch in Webmaster Tools?
My site is currently verified using a meta tag for both Google and Bing. Will I need to recreate the meta tag or will I be able to use the same one?
Technical SEO | | EcommerceSite1 -
Robots.txt & Mobile Site
Background - Our mobile site is on the same domain as our main site. We use a folder approach for our mobile site abc.com/m/home.html We are re-directing traffic to our mobile site vie device detection and re-direction exists for a handful of pages of our site ie most of our pages do not redirect the user to a mobile equivalent page. Issue – Our mobile pages are being indexed in desktop Google searches Input Required – How should we modify our robots.txt so that the desktop google index does not index our mobile pages/urls User-agent: Googlebot-Mobile Disallow: /m User-agent: `YahooSeeker/M1A1-R2D2` Disallow: /m User-agent: `MSNBOT_Mobile` Disallow: /m Many thanks
Technical SEO | | CeeC-Blogger0 -
Mobile SEO for mobile site
Hey there! I own a desktop website and just now finishe building a mobile site ( not a responsive design one) and I wish to start ranking my site on mobile serch result page. due to the automatic redirection from desktop website to the mobile site im confused: where should link to in order to SEO my mobile site? should i link to domin.com and assume the link juice is passing on? or should i link to m.domim.com?
Technical SEO | | logophone0 -
Mobile URL parameter (Redirection to desktop)
Hello, We have a parallel mobile website and recently we implemented a link pointing to the desktop website. This redirect is happening via a javascript code and results in a url followed by this paramenter: ?m=off Example:
Technical SEO | | echo1
http://www.m.website.com redirects to:
http://www.website.com/?m=off Questions: Will the "http://www.website.com/?m=off" be considered duplicate content with "http://www.website.com" since they both return the same content? Is there any possibility that Google will take into consideration the url ending in "/?m=off"? How should we treat this new url? The webmaster tools URL parameter configuration at the moment isn't experiencing problems but should we submit the parameter anyway in order not to be indexed or should we wait first and see the error response? In case we should submit this for removal... what's the best way to do it? Like this? Parameter: ?m=off Does this parameter change page content seen by the user? - doesn't affect page content Any help is much appreciated.
Thank you!0 -
Switching from a .org to .io (301 domain redirect)
I'm considering switching my main site from a .org to .io address; the .org is an exact match domain which helped to kickstart it a few years ago and now has about 50% repeat visitors, but was thrown off the Apple affiliation program for trademark infringement. I've found and purchased a nice (non-infringing) .io domain, and I've read the advice here on how to properly 301 the old domain; but my question is - does it matter that it's .io? Is this going to significantly hurt my rankings, even when everything has been 301'd properly? Another thought I had is that I may actually come out better off in the long run, what with Google penalties being applied to exact match domains. Is this a ranking suicide? If so, I'm tempted to leave it as is; even without the affiliation, it's making a good amount every month in ad fees that I don't want to disrupt. Thanks all!
Technical SEO | | w0lfiesmithUK0 -
What's the best way to switch over to a new site with a different CMS?
Is it better to 301 or to closely duplicate each page URL when switching over to a new website from an established site with good ranking and a different CMS ( Drupal switching to Wordpress)?
Technical SEO | | OhYeahSteve0