One of the fastest growing segment of using Internet, is the smartphones. Google seeks to offer them complete richness of web. In an effort to improve mobile web service, we have published our suggestions along with the commonest of configuration mistakes.
Such mistakes when avoided help the users of the smartphones to properly engage with the site while helping the searchers find out what they are looking for in a much faster way.
We are planning to roll out a number of changes in ranking with a view to improving a smartphone user’s search experience while addressing the pain points. The changes would be implemented in such mobile website as is not configured properly for the users of smartphone.
Here have been discussed two most common faults along with ways for fixing those.
Faulty redirects
Separate URLs are used by some of the websites for serving desktop as well as smartphone users. It most often happens that a smartphone user is redirected by desktop page to a page that is irrelevant on a smartphone optimized mobile website. We can take an instance when all the pages on desktop site redirect the user to the home page of the site. The workflow of the user is disrupted with such redirects which often causes them go elsewhere from using the website. Even when the user remains on the site, the redirects add workload and these become all the more problematic in when on slow networks.
It is easy to avoid the irrelevant redirects. The smartphone users can be redirected from the desktop URL to an equivalent page on another mobile website. If the format of the content isn’t smartphone friendly, it is better to show the content on desktop rather than redirect to a page that is irrelevant.
Errors only on smartphones
There are some sites that offer content to the users of desktop when they use a URL, which later show error page when opened on smartphone. There are some such instances when errors can be found on smartphones only. Some very common errors are listed under:
· If you understand that some mobile device is used by a user to visit desktop page, while you have a corresponding smartphone optimized web page on a different mobile website, it is better to redirect the user to the corresponding page rather than showing 404 error.
· It is important to see that smartphone optimized web page isn’t error page in itself. In case the content is unavailable in smartphone optimized format, it is better to offer desktop page. A
· Instance of a mistake is the redirecting of smartphone optimized Googlebot Mobile to a features phone optimized website, and thus, in turn, the Googlebot Mobile optimized for smartphone is redirected to desktop site which leads to an infinitely redirecting loop that is recognized as error.
It is easy to avoid the mistake. The user agents of Googlebot- Mobile identify themselves as particular mobile devices.
