My Website No Longer Appears in Mobile Google Search but Does in Desktop...Why Is This?

[WSIDW]

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.

[WSIDW]

Thanks very much Kristina. I will look into that.

[WSIDW]

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?

[KristinaKledzik]

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?

[Travis_Bailey]

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:

1. Look into the duplicate content issue.
2. 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.