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
-
Hard to tell what to do without seeing specifically where this error is coming up, but it usually has something to do with font sizes being too small on mobile devices. Mobiles have much more densely packed pixels on their screens (images are sharper, the pixels are smaller and more numerous). This means that 12 pixels (font-size) on desktop can look like 5 or 6 pixels on mobile devices (or even smaller)
This is why, with responsive design, many people don't specify a pixel-based font-size. They'll make the font size relative (rather than absolute) somehow, be that by calculating pixel width against screen width as some percentage, or by working with newer font-sizing specifications (there are many, and many ways to use them). It's all about inflating font-sizes on devices with more densely packed pixel screens, so that the fonts don't come out looking minuscule
Sometimes you can get errors where, even though the site's design is responsive, as someone was writing text in the CMS text editor - it appended styling info including the px font-size, which is then inlined (overruling all your perfectly thought out font-sizing CSS rules)
If it's not mobile related at all, it's likely that the font is just generally too small
-
Hi Ben,
Have you tried increasing the font size? It may sound daft but normally the obvious is the simple answer.
Most CMS have an easy option to change the font size across the whole website and you can test it to make sure it does not have an adverse effect on larger screens.
The other point that springs to mind is to make sure you don't have any really small text on the page, check your footer for one, but also if the domain has spammy text hidden with really small text size that won't help.
It might help if you could share the text size you are using if none o the above help.
Steve
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
-
Updating Old Content - Should I update In Search Console?
Hey Mozzers If I'm updating old content on a site (for example adding some copy and adding some new links in the page) - Is it important to get Google to recrawl with the feature in webmaster tools? If you didn't do this, could you be waiting a long time for google to recrawl the URL? Cheers!
Technical SEO | | wearehappymedia0 -
Big Increase in 404 Errors after Google Custom Search Engine Install on Website
My URL is: http://www.furniturefashion.comHi forum.I recently installed a Custom Google Search Engine (https://www.google.com/cse/) on my blog about ten days ago. Since then my 404 errors in Webmaster Tools has skyrocketed by several thousand. I had not had an issue before. Once it was installed the 404 errors started appearing. What's interesting is that all the errors have the URL then the word "undefined" at the end. I have attached a screen shot from my Webmaster Tools dashboard. Also, there are a few examples below of what the URLs are that have the 404 errors.wood_closet_organizer_to_improve_space_utilization/undefinedsmall-sweet-10-inspiring-small-kitchen-designs/undefined Has anyone had this issue? I very much want the search engine on my site, but not at the expense of several thousand 404 errors. My site queries has been going down since the installation of the custom search engine. Here is some of the code that I have below that I took off my site doing a "view source". Any help would be greatly appreciated.href='http://cdn.furniturefashion.com/wp-content/plugins/google-custom-search/css/smoothness/jquery-ui-1.7.3.custom.css?ver=3.9.2' type='text/css' media='all' />rel='stylesheet' id='gsc_style_search_bar-css' href='http://www.google.com/cse/style/look/minimalist.css?ver=3.9.2' type='text/css' media='all' />rel='stylesheet' id='gsc_style_search_bar_more-css' href='http://cdn.furniturefashion.com/wp-content/plugins/google-custom-search/css/gsc.css?ver=3.9.2' type='text/css' media='all' />< uXRSEkC
Technical SEO | | will21120 -
Responsive web design has a crawl error of redirecting to HTTP instead of HTTPS ? is this because of the new update of google that appreciates the HTTPs more?
We at yamsafer.me are using a Repsonsive web design! A crawl errors occured which redirects the hompage to an HTTP version instead of HTTPS? Any ideas on why this happened?
Technical SEO | | Yamsafer.com0 -
How do I influence what page on my site google shows for specific search phrases?
Hi People, My client has a site www.activeadventures.com. They provide adventure tours of New Zealand, South America and the Himalayas. These destinations are split into 3 folders in the site (eg: activeadventures.com/new-zealand, activeadventures.com/south-america etc....). The actual root folder of the site is generic information for all of the destinations whilst the destination specific folders are specific in their information for the destination in question. The Problem: If you search for say "Active New Zealand" or "Adventure Tours South America" our result that comes up is the activeadventures.com homepage rather than the destination folder homepage (eg: We would want activeadventures.com/new-zealand to be the landing page for people searching for "active new zealand"). Are there any ways in influence google as to what page on our site it chooses to serve up? Many thanks in advance. Conrad
Technical SEO | | activenz0 -
Google rankings strange behaviour - our site can only be found when searching repeatedly
Hello, We are experiencing something very odd at the moment I hope somebody could shed some light on this. The rankings of our site dropped from page 2 to page 15 approx. 9 months ago. At first we thought we had been penalised and filed a consideration request. Google got back to us saying that there was no manual actions applied to our site. We have been working very hard to try to get the ranking up again and it seems to be improving. Now, according to several serps monitoring services, we are on page 2/3 again for the term "holiday lettings". However, the really strange thing is that when we search for this term on Google UK, our site is nowhere to be found. If you then right away hit the search button again searching for the same term, then voila! our website is on www.alphaholidaylettings.com page 2 / 3! We tried this on many different computers at different locations (private and public computers), making sure we have logged out from Google Accounts (so that customised search results are not returned). We even tried the computers at various retail outlets including different Apple stores. The results are the same. Essentially, we are never found when someone search for us for the first time, our site only shows up if you search for the same term for the second or third time. We just could not understand why this is happening. Somebody told me it could be due to "Google dance" when indices on different servers are being updated, but this has now been going on for nearly 3 months. Has anyone experienced similar situations or have any advice? Many thanks!
Technical SEO | | forgottenlife0 -
Choosing the right page for rel="canonical"
I am wondering how you would choose which page to use as a canonical ? All our articles sit in an article section and they are called in the url when linked from a particular category. Since some articles are in many categories, we may have several links for the same page. My first idea was to put the one in the article category as the canonical, but I wonder if Google will lose the context of the page for it's ranking because it will not be in the proper category. For exemple, this page in the article section : http://www.bdc.ca/en/advice_centre/articles/Pages/exporting_entering.aspx Same page in the Expand Your Sales > Going Global section : http://www.bdc.ca/EN/advice_centre/expand_your_sales/going_global_or_international_markets/Pages/RelatedArticles.aspx?PATH=/EN/advice_centre/articles/Pages/exporting_entering.aspx The second one has much more context related to it, like the breadcrumb is showing the path and the left menu is open at the right place. For this example, I would choose te second one, but some articles may be found in 2 or 3 categories. If you could share your lights on this it would be very appreciated ! Thanks
Technical SEO | | jfmonfette0 -
How to optimize for different google seach center (google.de, google.ch) ?
We all use Deutsch language and (.com) domains for the sites. I ranked well in google.com ,but not so well in google.de , google.ch , my competitors ranked much better in google.de,google.ch. I checked most of their outbound-links, but get few information. Links from (.DE) domains or links from sites located in German help the rank for special google seach center ? (google.de, google.ch) . Or some other factors i missed? please help.
Technical SEO | | sunvary0 -
Are my graphical top level nav button links read by google spider
I have a site hypeled.com - the top level nav buttons are images. I have checked in Fireworks (with style off) and Lynx how the site appears to the Google spider and the top level links are not visible in either representation. In the source code the links have alt tags - The buttons are CSS and are referenced like this: <a <span="">class</a><a <span="">="company" href="</a>/the-company/"> Does google read these links? Does google read the source code of the site and give the proper weight to the top level links? Thank you, Jonathon
Technical SEO | | jonniewap0