Smart phone users are the fast growing among the internet users and they want to experience the full richness in web. As part of our efforts to improve the mobile web, we published our recommendations and the most common configuration mistakes.
If these mistakes avoided they can get engaged fully in search. In the near future we plan to roll out the several rankings changes where the address sites which get misconfigured for smartphone users.
Below come the most common mistakes and the way to fix them.
Faulty redirects
A faulty redirect is when a desktop page redirects smartphone users to an irrelevant page on the smartphone-optimized website. A typical example is when all pages on the desktop site redirect smartphone users to the homepage of the smartphone-optimized site. For example, in the figure below, the redirects shown as red arrows are considered faulty:
This type of redirects disrupts work flow and can lead to stop using the site. Faulty redirects happen mostly to users whenever they look for web page, video etc. Avoiding irrelevant redirects is very easy: Simply redirect smartphone users from a desktop page to its equivalent smartphone-optimized page. If the content doesn’t exist in a smartphone-friendly format, showing the desktop content is better than redirecting to an irrelevant page.
Smartphone-only errors
The same URL when accessed in desk top shows content but when accessing via smart phone shows error page. There are many scenarios where smartphone-only errors are seen. Some common ones are:
- If you recognize a user is visiting a desktop page from a mobile device and you have an equivalent smartphone-friendly page at a different URL, redirect them to that URL instead of serving a 404.
- The smartphone friendly page should not be an error page. If your content is not available in a smartphone-friendly format, serve the desktop page instead.
- An infinite redirect loop happens when a typical mistake is happened in Googlebot-Mobile when it’s incorrectly redirected to web site optimized feature phones.
- Unplayable videos on smartphone devices. Many websites embed videos in a way that works well on desktops but is unplayable on smartphone devices. For example, if content requires Adobe Flash, it won’t be playable on an iPhone or on Android versions 4.1 and higher.
Before giving it in hands of smart phone users improve your web and make users happy, and allow searches to experience your content fully. Try to test your site on many mobile devices and operating systems which makes you to shine the best among smart phone users.