How do you link your adaptive mobile site to Google Analytics?
-
With Google now saying they're putting a lot more emphasis on mobile sites, we recently got notifications from Google Webmaster Tools saying that some of our pages are not built for mobile. Some of these pages, however have an adaptive page that when you visit from a mobile phone (m.mysite.com), you're taken to instead of the desktop version.
My question is, how do I let Google know that I have an adaptive site and not get penalized for poor mobile usability? I already have Google Analytics on the mobile site, I just need to somehow let Webmaster tools / Google's web crawlers know that they should be looking to my mobile site for usability, not the desktop site.
Any advice is appreciated!
-
I was just addressing that few days ago.
Google have been kind enough to provide a very detailed guide on how to do that: https://developers.google.com/webmasters/mobile-sites/mobile-seo/configurations/separate-urls
You need to annotate your html accordingly, all the details are there, just read it.
-
You're welcome. If your goal is to maintain and grow the rankings associated with the desktop version of your site in mobile, one of the best ways to do so currently is by using a responsive frame work. From a user perspective that sort of site is serving mobile, tablet, and desktop all from the same URLs. Something like Layers would be an example for Wordpress (http://www.layerswp.com) while Squarespace (http://www.squarespace.com/) is a common example in the smaller site realm. If you're thinking of transitioning over a larger site it'd definitely be more of a dev-based commitment. Currently Google houses the bulk of its guides on this here: https://developers.google.com/webmasters/mobile-sites/.
-
Thanks, Ryan. Do you know what you're supposed to do if you don't have a 1 to 1 relationship of all your desktop pages to your mobile site? Our mobile site is much smaller than our desktop version. Thanks!!
-
That definitely answered my question, thanks!!
-
You can also test the m.mysite.com version of your site in Google's PageSpeed Insights here: https://developers.google.com/speed/pagespeed/insights/ and then scroll to the bottom of the mobile portion of the score and see your usability score there as well. This is handy for breaking out a score from GWT. Is the m.mysite.com domain also listed in GWT?
Ideally you'd be able to have a 1 to 1 relationship from desktop pages to your mobile site as that would be the clearest signal that the two are tied together closely and only separated for usability purposes. The video Chris linked to also has quite a few additional insights from Matt Cutts, so worth the watch. Cheers!
-
Matt Cutts from Google addressed this in a short Youtube video you can watch here. I hope that 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
-
How can I avoid too many internal links in my site navigation?
Hi! I always get this notification on my pages 'Avoid Too Many Internal Links' when I run the Page Optimization Score. And this is the message I get how to fix it: Scale down the number of internal links on your page to fewer than 100, if possible. At a minimum, try to keep navigation and menu links to fewer than 100. On my website I got a desktop navigation menu and a mobile variant, so in the source this will show more internal links. If I hide those links with CSS for the view, is the problem then solved? So Does Google then see less internal links? Or does Google crawl everything? I'm curious how I can fix this double internal links issue with my navigation menu.
Technical SEO | | Tomvl
What are you guys ideas / experiences about this?0 -
Lots of links from a Wiki pointing at main site
Hi everyone This may seem a bit obvious but I am getting conflicting answers on this, we have a client that has a wiki that is basically an online manual of their software. They do it like this because the manual is so big and is constantly developing, there are thousands of pages with loads of links that are pointing to various sections of relevance on the main site as well, the majority of these are No Follow but I have noticed that they have a single link on the navigation that is a direct link to their main site that is a follow link, obviously this is a sitewide. Would this be seen as being detrimental to the main site, should I have this set as No Follow as well. Thanks in Advance
Technical SEO | | Andrew_Birkitt0 -
Unnatural links to your site--impacts links
Hi, I just recive a "nice" Massage at my WMT- Unnatural links to your site—impacts links _Google has detected a pattern of unnatural artificial, deceptive, or manipulative links pointing to pages on this site. Some links may be outside of the webmaster’s control, so for this incident we are taking targeted action on the unnatural links instead of on the site’s ranking as a whole. Learn more._Did someone here came across any massage like this before?if so, any suggestion on what to so next?Whould love for some help! Thanks
Technical SEO | | Tit0 -
Do I need to do on-page SEO for my mobile site?
We have a desktop site, and we just built our first mobile site. Right now, the mobile site doesn't have any title tags, meta descriptions or anything like that, but do I need to even do that? If I have all of that on the desktop site, and the mobile site is just redirected from the desktop site, can't I just do it on the desktop site only? Is there anything to gain from doing it for both sites?
Technical SEO | | KempRugeLawGroup0 -
Google Links
I am assuming that the list presented by Google Webmaster tools (TRAFFIC | Links To Your Site) is the one that will actually be used by Google for indexing ? There seem to be quite a few links that there that should not be there. ie Assumed NOFOLLOW links. Am I working under an incorrect assumption that all links in webmaster tools are actually followed ?
Technical SEO | | blinkybill0 -
Mini site links?
Can anyone point me to information about the "mini" site links on the Google search results or tell me how to get them set up? These aren't the full site links that show 3 by 3 under the first listing but small text links that appear for certain results. (See attached image for reference.) Are these something that can controlled/requested? NAj6E.png
Technical SEO | | DVanSchepen0 -
Google Panda and ticketing sites: quality of content
Hi from Madrid! I am managing the Marketing Department of a ticketing site in Europe similar to Stubhub.com. We have thousands of events and, until now, we used templates for their descriptions. A lot of events share the same description with minor changes. They also have a lot of tickets on sale, so that's unique content different on each event. Now the last Google Panda update hit Europe and I was wondering if that will affect us a lot. It's hard to tell for now, because we are in the middle of the summer and the volume of searches in our industry depends decreases a lot during this time of the year. I know that ideally we should have unique descriptions but that would need a lot of resources and they are not important for our users: they just want to know the venue, the time and the price of the tickets! Have you experienced something about Google Panda update with a similar site or with another e-commerce industry? Thanks!
Technical SEO | | jorgediaz0 -
Does Google take user site blockings from Chrome as a spam signal?
When you perform a search in Chrome, click through to a result, then hit "back", you get a nice little option to "Block all example.com results" listed next to the result from which you backed out. I am assuming Google collects this information from Chrome users whose settings allow them to? I am assuming this is a spam signal (in aggregate)? Anyone know? Thanks!
Technical SEO | | TheEspresseo0