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
-
Google Indexing Desktop & Mobile Versions
We have a relatively new site and I have noticed recently that Google seems to be indexing both the mobile and the desktop version of our site. There are some queries where the mobile version will show up and sometimes both mobile and desktop show up. This can't be good. I would imagine that what is supposed to happen is that the desktop version is the one that should be indexed (always) and browser detection will load the mobile version where appropriate once the user is on the site. Do you have any advice on what we should do to solve this problem as we are a bit stuck?
Technical SEO | | simonukss0 -
No confirmation page on Google's Disavow links tool?
I've been going through and doing some spring cleaning on some spammy links to my site. I used Google's Disavow links tool, but after I submit my text file, nothing happens. Should I be getting some sort of confirmation page? After I upload my file, I don't get any notifications telling me Google has received my file or anything like that. It just takes me back to this page: http://cl.ly/image/0S320q46321R/Image 2013-04-26 at 11.15.25 AM.png Am I doing something wrong or is this what everyone else is seeing too?
Technical SEO | | shawn810 -
Google using descriptions from other websites instead of site's own meta description
In the last month or so, Google has started displaying a description under links to my home page in its search results that doesn't actually come from my site. I have a meta description tag in place and for a very limited set of keywords, that description is displayed, but for the majority of results, it's displaying a description that appears on Alexa.com and a handful of other sites that seem to have copied Alexa's listing, e.g. similarsites.com. The problem is, the description from these other sites isn't particularly descriptive and mentions a service that we no longer provide. So my questions are: Why is Google doing this? Surely that's broken behaviour. How do I fix it?
Technical SEO | | antdesign0 -
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 -
Why is an error page showing when searching our website using Google "site:" search function?
When I search our company website using the Google site search function "site:jwsuretybonds.com", a 400 Bad Request page is at the top of the listed pages. I had someone else at our company do the same site search and the 400 Bad Request did not appear. Is there a reason this is happening, and are there any ramifications to it?
Technical SEO | | TheDude0 -
Removing a site from Google's index
We have a site we'd like to have pulled from Google's index. Back in late June, we disallowed robot access to the site through the robots.txt file and added a robots meta tag with "no index,no follow" commands. The expectation was that Google would eventually crawl the site and remove it from the index in response to those tags. The problem is that Google hasn't come back to crawl the site since late May. Is there a way to speed up this process and communicate to Google that we want the entire site out of the index, or do we just have to wait until it's eventually crawled again?
Technical SEO | | issuebasedmedia0 -
Site:www.tld.com rank is it a measure of googles per page importance?
Hello, does the order of pages in a site:www.tld.com search show how important each page is to google? what if the homepage is not the first result?
Technical SEO | | adamzski0 -
How long does it take for customized Google Site Search to show results from pdf files?
The site in question is http://www.ejmh.eu I am pretty unsatisfied with the results I am getting from the Site Search provided by Google. We have over 160 pdf files in this subfolder: http://www.ejmh.eu/mellekletek The files are the digital versions of articles. When I search for content in those pdf files, Google does not show results. It does show results from older pages, dating back 1-2 years but it is certainly not showing anything from pdf files that I have just put up 3 weeks ago. My questions: If I place a Google Search on a site, does it not automatically display results from ALL the content in the root domain? Is there any correlation between how the Site Search is indexing the files and how Google is indexing the urls in general? Should I just wait and see whether site search performance improves or should I switch to another Search software like Zoom Search? It is vital to have a proper, high-quality search functioning on that site in the very near future. What are your experiences? Any tips are greatly appreciated.
Technical SEO | | Lauroca0