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If we can't change the tags before launch, but change them immediately after, how long does it take Google to recognize the change and adjust our ranking? Will we be digging ourselves out of a hole if we implement it the wrong way and fix it shortly after?

Isn't a noindex page still crawlable though? We are not disallowing it in robots.txt - they just don't want both the mobile site and the desktop site showing up in the search index.

My developers are telling me that if the desktop site redirects a mobile user to the mobile site, it will get the mobile friendly tag. (It's a separate subsite, rather than dynamic serving on the same URL).

Is there an advantage to using link rel=alternate (as recommended by Google) rather than noindex on pages on my mobile site (m.company.com)?

The content on the mobile pages is very similar to the content on the desktop site. I see Google recommends canonical and alternate tags, but what are the benefits of using those rather than noindex?

Thanks Kate. The content is very similar between countries, to the degree where I thought it was translated verbatim at first. Looking deeper, I see that there is some slight variation between offerings.

The client is only using language codes: en, it, fr - except in China, where they have two versions of the site (zh-hans and zh-en. The second code, zh-en, is incorrect).

All the content is set up under subdirectories, e.g. site.com/en rather than microsites en.site.com.

Does this change your judgment?

In the Abercrombie case, the site that comes up in the search results is the EU mobile site, with German language. When I click on it, it seems that they are automatically redirecting me to abercrombie.com; not the English version of m.eu.abercrombie.com. I find automatic redirects annoying - in this case, I'm intentionally trying to hit the German site and I can't.

We are in development of the new global mobile site. The existing desktop site is being "punished" for not being mobile-friendly. Hence why we are creating a mobile site in the age of responsive design

According to the client, the site is being penalized for not being mobile friendly; but there could be other reasons. The desktop site has 10-12 versions, set up as subdirectories.

If the native language site will come up first, the client is fine with doing nothing. If not, they want us to redirect the users as you described. But since we're still in development, we're not sure what the answer is.

Do you think it's most likely that the native language site would come up first?

The long-term plan is to create responsive sites, for better SEO and UX, so this is just a temporary interim solution.

Hi, we are currently implementing a mobile site, e.g. m.company.com. The global mobile site will only be available in English.

We have local subsites of the desktop site, e.g. company.com/fr. The local subsites are not mobile friendly.

If a user does a search for a brand term in France, **which site will rank higher in SERPs? **If it will be the global site, is there anything we can do (other than making them mobile friendly) to make the local sites rank higher?

Would it be the mobile-friendly site, even though it is only in English, because the local site would be penalized for not being mobile friendly? Or would it be the local site, because Google will give priority to the fact that it's in French, which matches the language of the person searching?