Moz Q&A is closed.
After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.
Desktop & Mobile XML Sitemap Submitted But Only Desktop Sitemap Indexed On Google Search Console
-
Hi!
The Problem
We have submitted to GSC a sitemap index. Within that index there are 4 XML Sitemaps. Including one for the desktop site and one for the mobile site. The desktop sitemap has 3300 URLs, of which Google has indexed (according to GSC) 3,000 (approx). The mobile sitemap has 1,000 URLs of which Google has indexed 74 of them.
The pages are crawlable, the site structure is logical. And performing a Landing Page URL search (showing only Google/Organic source/medium) on Google Analytics I can see that hundreds of those mobile URLs are being landed on. A search on mobile for a longtail keyword from a (randomly selected) page shows a result in the SERPs for the mobile page that judging by GSC has not been indexed.
Could this be because we have recently added rel=alternate tags on our desktop pages (and of course corresponding canonical ones on mobile). Would Google then 'not index' rel=alternate page versions?
Thanks for any input on this one.
-
Hi Allison, any updates on this?
From my understanding, it is possible that Google is not indexing the mobile versions of pages if they are simply corresponding to the desktop pages (and indicated as such with the rel=alternate mobile switchboard tags). If they have that information they may simply index the desktop pages and then display the mobile URL in search results.
It is also possible that the GSC data is not accurate - if you do a 'site:' search for your mobile pages (I would try something like 'site:domain/m/' and see what shows up), does it show a higher number of mobile pages than what you're seeing in GSC?
Can you check data for your mobile rankings and see what URLs are being shown for mobile searchers? If your data is showing that mobile users are landing on these pages from search, this would indicate that they are being shown in search results, even if they're not showing up as "indexed" in GSC.
-
Apologies on the delayed reply and thank you for providing this information!
Has there been any change in this trend over the last week? I do know that subfolder mobile sites are generally not recommended by search engines. That being said, I do not feel the mobile best practice would change as a result. Does the site automatically redirect the user based on their device? If so, be sure Google is redirecting appropriately as well.
"When a website is configured to serve desktop and mobile browsers using different URLs, webmasters may want to automatically redirect users to the URL that best serves them. If your website uses automatic redirection, be sure to treat all Googlebots just like any other user-agent and redirect them appropriately."
Here is Google's documentation on best practices for mobile sites with separate URLs. I do believe the canonical and alternate tags should be left in place. It may be worth experimenting with the removal of these mobile URLs from the sitemap though I feel this is more of a redundancy issue than anything.
I would also review Google's documentation on 'Common Mobile Mistakes', perhaps there is an issue that is restricting search engines from crawling the mobile site efficiently.
Hope that helps!
-
Hi Paul and Joe
Thanks for the reply!
Responsive is definitely in the works...
In the meantime to answer:
-
GSC is setup for the mobile site. However its not on a subdomain, its a subdirectory mobile site. So rather than m.site.com we have www.site.com/m for the mobile sites. A sitemap has been submitted and thats where I can see the data as shown in the image.
-
Because the mobile site is a subdirectory site the data becomes a little blended with the main domain data in Google Search Console. If I want to see Crawl Stats for example Google advises "To see stats and diagnostic information, view the data for (https://www.site.com/)."
-
re: "My recommendation is to remove the XML sitemap and rely on the rel=alternate/canonical tags to get the mobile pages indexed. Google's John Mueller has stated that you do not need a mobile XML sitemap file." I had read this previously, but due to the nature of the sub-directory setup of the site, the mobile sitemap became part of the sitemap index...rather than having just one large sitemap.
Thoughts?
-
-
ASs joe says - set up a separate GSC profile for the mdot subdomain. The use that to submit the mdot sitemap directly if you wish. You'll get vastly better data about the performance of the mdot site by having it split out, instead of mixed into and obfuscated by the desktop data.
Paul
-
Hi Alison,
While this is a bit late, I would recommend moving to a responsive site when/if possible. Much easier to manage, fewer issues with search engines.
My recommendation is to remove the XML sitemap and rely on the rel=alternate/canonical tags to get the mobile pages indexed. Google's John Mueller has stated that you do not need a mobile XML sitemap file.
Also, do you have Google Search Console set up for both the m. mobile site and the desktop version? It does not seem so with all sitemaps listed in the one property in your screenshot. If not, I recommend setting this up as you may receive some valuable insights into how Google is crawling the mobile site.
I'd also review Google's Common Mobile Mistakes guide to see if any of these issues could be impacting your situation. 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
-
Unsolved Google Search Console Still Reporting Errors After Fixes
Hello, I'm working on a website that was too bloated with content. We deleted many pages and set up redirects to newer pages. We also resolved an unreasonable amount of 400 errors on the site. I also removed several ancient sitemaps that listed content deleted years ago that Google was crawling. According to Moz and Screaming Frog, these errors have been resolved. We've submitted the fixes for validation in GSC, but the validation repeatedly fails. What could be going on here? How can we resolve these error in GSC.
Technical SEO | | tif-swedensky0 -
Google Search Console "Text too small to read" Errors
What are the guidelines / best practices for clearing these errors? Google has some pretty vague documentation on how to handle this sort of error. User behavior metrics in GA are pretty much in line with desktop usage and don't show anything concerning Any input is appreciated! Thanks m3F3uOI
Technical SEO | | Digital_Reach2 -
Should search pages be indexed?
Hey guys, I've always believed that search pages should be no-indexed but now I'm wondering if there is an argument to index them? Appreciate any thoughts!
Technical SEO | | RebekahVP0 -
Hide sitelinks from Google search results
Does anyone have any recommendations on how you can tell Google (hopefully via a URL) not to index that page of a website? I have tried through SEO Yoast to hide certain sitemaps (which has worked to a degree) but certain functionalities of Wordpress websites show links without them actually being part of a "sitemap" so those links are harder to hide. I'm having an issue with one of my websites - the sitelinks that Google is suggesting are nowhere near the most popular pages and I know that you can't make recommendations through Google not to show certain pages through Search Console. anymore. Any suggestions are greatly appreciated! Thanks!
Technical SEO | | MainstreamMktg0 -
Google is indexing bad URLS
Hi All, The site I am working on is built on Wordpress. The plugin Revolution Slider was downloaded. While no longer utilized, it still remained on the site for some time. This plugin began creating hundreds of URLs containing nothing but code on the page. I noticed these URLs were being indexed by Google. The URLs follow the structure: www.mysite.com/wp-content/uploads/revslider/templates/this-part-changes/ I have done the following to prevent these URLs from being created & indexed: 1. Added a directive in my Htaccess to 404 all of these URLs 2. Blocked /wp-content/uploads/revslider/ in my robots.txt 3. Manually de-inedex each URL using the GSC tool 4. Deleted the plugin However, new URLs still appear in Google's index, despite being blocked by robots.txt and resolving to a 404. Can anyone suggest any next steps? I Thanks!
Technical SEO | | Tom3_150 -
Google Search Console Not Sending Messages
One of our sites received a Manual Penalty for unnatural links by Google. However, we never received a message in Google Search Console or an email about the manual action. The only reason we knew about the penalty is by the obvious drop in rankings, then signing into search console to look for any manual actions, which we found. Since then, we have submitted a disavow file and a reconsideration request. However, once again we did not receive an email or message in search console that shows confirmation of the disavow or that they received the reconsideration request. The disavow file does show up after I upload it, and it says it was successfully uploaded... but no messages or emails. After many hours of investigating the various canonical versions of our website on Search Console, we found out that there were several “owners” of the various canonical versions of our site that had “could not find the email address” as a site owner. We found out that these were previous employees who no longer worked with the company and their email address was deleted. After unverifying these site owners, (all the ones that had “could not find the email address” as the site owner), the notifications, emails and messages in Search Console started to appear. However, the only place they did not appear, is the main canonical version of our site. Of course, the main canonical version of our site (https://www) is the version that we uploaded the disavow and reconsideration request. This is the canonical version of the site that we need to receive these messages to know if our reconsideration request was granted! We’ve just reuploaded the disavow file and reconsideration request to all of the other canonical versions (2 of the 3 received the message about the penalty)…. and we are currently awaiting a response. Has anybody else had problems with not receiving notifications in search console due to deleted email addresses?
Technical SEO | | Fiyyazp0 -
301 Redirects Relating to Your XML Sitemap
Lets say you've got a website and it had quite a few pages that for lack of a better term were like an infomercial, 6-8 pages of slightly different topics all essentially saying the same thing. You could all but call it spam. www.site.com/page-1 www.site.com/page-2 www.site.com/page-3 www.site.com/page-4 www.site.com/page-5 www.site.com/page-6 Now you decided to consolidate all of that information into one well written page, and while the previous pages may have been a bit spammy they did indeed have SOME juice to pass through. Your new page is: www.site.com/not-spammy-page You then 301 redirect the previous 'spammy' pages to the new page. Now the question, do I immediately re-submit an updated xml sitemap to Google, which would NOT contain all of the old URL's, thus making me assume Google would miss the 301 redirect/seo juice. Or do I wait a week or two, allow Google to re-crawl the site and see the existing 301's and once they've taken notice of the changes submit an updated sitemap? Probably a stupid question I understand, but I want to ensure I'm following the best practices given the situation, thanks guys and girls!
Technical SEO | | Emory_Peterson0 -
Removing Redirected URLs from XML Sitemap
If I'm updating a URL and 301 redirecting the old URL to the new URL, Google recommends I remove the old URL from our XML sitemap and add the new URL. That makes sense. However, can anyone speak to how Google transfers the ranking value (link value) from the old URL to the new URL? My suspicion is this happens outside the sitemap. If Google already has the old URL indexed, the next time it crawls that URL, Googlebot discovers the 301 redirect and that starts the process of URL value transfer. I guess my question revolves around whether removing the old URL (or the timing of the removal) from the sitemap can impact Googlebot's transfer of the old URL value to the new URL.
Technical SEO | | RyanOD0