Official Google Webmaster Central Blog: mobile

Detect and get rid of unwanted sneaky mobile redirects

Thursday, October 29, 2015

In many cases, it is OK to show slightly different content on different devices. For example, optimizing the smaller space of a smartphone screen can mean that some content, like images, will have to be modified. Or you might want to store your website’s menu in a navigation drawer (find documentation here) to make mobile browsing easier and more effective. When implemented properly, these user-centric modifications can be understood very well by Google. The situation is similar when it comes to mobile-only redirect. Redirecting mobile users to improve their mobile experience (like redirecting mobile users from example.com/url1 to m.example.com/url1) is often beneficial to them. But redirecting mobile users sneakily to a different content is bad for user experience and is against Google’s webmaster guidelines.

A frustrating experience: The same URL shows up in search results pages on desktop and on mobile. When a user clicks on this result on their desktop computer, the URL opens normally. However, when clicking on the same result on a smartphone, a redirect happens and an unrelated URL loads.Who implements these mobile-only sneaky redirects?There are cases where webmasters knowingly decide to put into place redirection rules for their mobile users. This is typically a webmaster guidelines violation, and we do take manual action against it when it harms Google users’ experience (see last section of this article). But we’ve also observed situations where mobile-only sneaky redirects happen without site owners being aware of it:

Advertising schemes that redirect mobile users specifically
A script/element installed to display ads and monetize content might be redirecting mobile users to a completely different site without the webmaster being aware of it.

Mobile redirect as a result of the site being a target of hacking
In other cases, if your website has been hacked, a potential result can be redirects to spammy domains for mobile users only.

How do I detect if my site is doing sneaky mobile redirects?

Check if you are redirected when you navigate to your site on your smartphone
We recommend you to check the mobile user experience of your site by visiting your pages from Google search results with a smartphone. When debugging, mobile emulation in desktop browsers is handy, mostly because you can test for many different devices. You can, for example, do it straight from your browser in Chrome, Firefox or Safari (for the latter, make sure you have enabled the “Show Develop menu in menu bar” feature).

Listen to your users
Your users could see your site in a different way than you do. It’s always important to pay attention to user complaints, so you can hear of any issue related to mobile UX.

Monitor your users in your site’s analytics data
Unusual mobile user activity could be detected by looking at some of the data held in your website's analytics data. For example, looking at the average time spent on your site by your mobile users could be a good signal to watch: if all of a sudden, your mobile users (and only them) start spending much less time on your site than they used to, there might be an issue related to mobile redirections.

To be aware of wide changes in mobile user activity as soon as they happen, you can for example set up Google Analytics alerts. For example, you can set an alert to be warned in case of a sharp drop in average time spent on your site by mobile users, or a drop in mobile users (always take into account that big changes in those metrics are not a clear, direct signal that your site is doing mobile sneaky redirects).

I’ve detected sneaky redirects for my mobile users, and I did not set it up: what do I do?

Make sure that your site is not hacked.
Check the Security Issues tool in the Search Console, if we have noticed any hack, you should get some information there.
Review our additional resources on typical symptoms of hacked sites, and our case studies on hacked sites.

Audit third-party scripts/elements on your site
If your site is not hacked, then we recommend you take the time to investigate if third-party scripts/elements are causing the redirects. You can follow these steps:
A. Remove one by one the third-party scripts/elements you do not control from the redirecting page(s).
B. Check your site on a mobile device or through emulation between each script/element removal, and see when the redirect stops.
C. If you think a particular script/element is responsible for the sneaky redirect, consider removing it from your site, and debugging the issue with the script/element provider.

Last Thoughts on Sneaky Mobile RedirectsIt's a violation of the Google Webmaster Guidelines to redirect a user to a page with the intent of displaying content other than what was made available to the search engine crawler (more information on sneaky redirects). To ensure quality search results for our users, the Google Search Quality team can take action on such sites, including removal of URLs from our index. When we take manual action, we send a message to the site owner via Search Console. Therefore, make sure you’ve set up a Search Console account.Be sure to choose advertisers who are transparent on how they handle user traffic, to avoid unknowingly redirecting your own users. If you are interested in trust-building in the online advertising space, you may check out industry-wide best practices when participating in ad networks. For example, the Trustworthy Accountability Group’s (Interactive Advertising Bureau) Inventory Quality Guidelines are a good place to start. There are many ways to monetize your content with mobile solutions that provide a high quality user experience, be sure to use them.If you have questions or comments about mobile-only redirects, join us in our Google Webmaster Support forum.Written by Vincent Courson & Badr Salmi El Idrissi, Search Quality team

Mobile-friendly web pages using app banners

Tuesday, September 01, 2015

When it comes to search on mobile devices, users should get the most relevant answers, no matter if the answer lives in an app or a web page. We’ve recently made it easier for users to find and discover apps and mobile-friendly web pages. However, sometimes a user may tap on a search result on a mobile device and see an app install interstitial that hides a significant amount of content and prompts the user to install an app. Our analysis shows that it is not a good search experience and can be frustrating for users because they are expecting to see the content of the web page.Starting today, we’ll be updating the Mobile-Friendly Test to indicate that sites should avoid showing app install interstitials that hide a significant amount of content on the transition from the search result page. The Mobile Usability report in Search Console will show webmasters the number of pages across their site that have this issue.After November 1, mobile web pages that show an app install interstitial that hides a significant amount of content on the transition from the search result page will no longer be considered mobile-friendly. This does not affect other types of interstitials. As an alternative to app install interstitials, browsers provide ways to promote an app that are more user-friendly.

App install interstitials that hide a significant amount of content provide a bad search experience

App install banners are less intrusive and preferred

App install banners are supported by Safari (as Smart Banners) and Chrome (as Native App Install Banners). Banners provide a consistent user interface for promoting an app and provide the user with the ability to control their browsing experience. Webmasters can also use their own implementations of app install banners as long as they don’t block searchers from viewing the page’s content.If you have any questions, we’re always happy to chat in the Webmaster Central Forum.Posted by Daniel Bathgate, Software Engineer, Google Search.

Google+: A case study on App Download Interstitials

Thursday, July 23, 2015

Many mobile sites use promotional app interstitials to encourage users to download their native mobile apps. For some apps, native can provide richer user experiences, and use features of the device that are currently not easy to access on a browser. Because of this, many app owners believe that they should encourage users to install the native version of their online property or service. It’s not clear how aggressively to promote the apps, and a full page interstitial can interrupt the user from reaching their desired content.

On Google+ mobile web, we decided to take a closer look at our own use of interstitials. Internal user experience studies identified them as poor experiences, and Jennifer Gove gave a great talk at IO last year which highlights this user frustration.

Despite our intuition that we should remove the interstitial, we prefer to let data guide our decisions, so we set out to learn how the interstitial affected our users. Our analysis found that:

9% of the visits to our interstitial page resulted in the ‘Get App’ button being pressed. (Note that some percentage of these users already have the app installed or may never follow through with the app store download.)
69% of the visits abandoned our page. These users neither went to the app store nor continued to our mobile website.

While 9% sounds like a great CTR for any campaign, we were much more focused on the number of users who had abandoned our product due to the friction in their experience. With this data in hand, in July 2014, we decided to run an experiment and see how removing the interstitial would affect actual product usage. We added a Smart App Banner to continue promoting the native app in a less intrusive way, as recommended in the Avoid common mistakes section of our Mobile SEO Guide. The results were surprising:

1-day active users on our mobile website increased by 17%.
G+ iOS native app installs were mostly unaffected (-2%). (We’re not reporting install numbers from Android devices since most come with Google+ installed.)

Based on these results, we decided to permanently retire the interstitial. We believe that the increase in users on our product makes this a net positive change, and we are sharing this with the hope that you will reconsider the use of promotional interstitials. Let’s remove friction and make the mobile web more useful and usable!

(Since this study, we launched a better mobile web experience that is currently without an app banner. The banner can still be seen on iOS 6 and below.)

Posted by David Morell, Software Engineer, Google+

App deep linking with goo.gl

Wednesday, May 27, 2015

Starting now, goo.gl short links function as a single link you can use to all your content — whether that content is in your Android app, iOS app, or website. Once you’ve taken the necessary steps to set up App Indexing for Android and iOS, goo.gl URLs will send users straight to the right page in your app if they have it installed, and everyone else to your website. This will provide additional opportunities for your app users to re-engage with your app. This feature works for both new short URLs and retroactively, so any existing goo.gl short links to your content will now also direct users to your app.

Share links that ‘do the right thing’You can also make full use of this feature by integrating the URL Shortener API into your app’s share flow, so users can share links that automatically redirect to your native app cross-platform. This will also allow others to embed links in their websites and apps which deep link directly to your app.Take Google Maps as an example. With the new cross-platform goo.gl links, the Maps share button generates one link that provides the best possible sharing experience for everyone. When opened, the link auto-detects the user’s platform and if they have Maps installed. If the user has the app installed, the short link opens the content directly in the Android or iOS Maps app. If the user doesn’t have the app installed or is on desktop, the short link opens the page on the Maps website. Try it out for yourself! Don’t forget to use a phone with the Google Maps app installed: http://goo.gl/maps/xlWFj.How to set it up To set up app deep linking on goo.gl:

Complete the necessary steps to participate in App Indexing for Android and iOS at g.co/AppIndexing. Note that goo.gl deep links are open to all iOS developers, unlike deep links from Search currently. After this step, existing goo.gl short links will start deep linking to your app.

Optionally integrate the URL Shortener API with your app’s share flow, your email campaigns, etc. to programmatically generate links that will deep link directly back to your app.

We hope you enjoy this new functionality and happy cross-platform sharing!Posted by Fabian Schlup, Software Engineer

Surfacing content from iOS apps in Google Search

Wednesday, May 27, 2015

We’ve been helping users discover relevant content from Android apps in Google search results for a while now. Starting today, we’re bringing App Indexing to iOS apps as well. This means users on both Android and iOS will be able to open mobile app content straight from Google Search.Indexed links from an initial group of apps we’ve been working with will begin appearing on iOS in search results both in the Google App and Chrome for signed-in users globally in the coming weeks:

How to get your iOS app indexedWhile App Indexing for iOS is launching with a small group of test partners initially, we’re working to make this technology available to more app developers as soon as possible. In the meantime, here are the steps to get a head start on App Indexing for iOS:

Add deep linking support to your iOS app.

Make sure it’s possible to return to Search results with one click.

Provide deep link annotations on your site.

Let us know you’re interested. Keep in mind that expressing interest does not automatically guarantee getting app deep links in iOS search results.

If you happen to be attending Google I/O this week, stop by our talk titled “Get your app in the Google index” to learn more about App Indexing. You’ll also find detailed documentation on App Indexing for iOS at g.co/AppIndexing. If you’ve got more questions, drop by our Webmaster help forum.Posted by Eli Wald, Product Manager

Rolling out the red carpet for app owners in Search Console

Friday, May 22, 2015

Wouldn’t it be nifty if you could track where your indexed app content shows up in search results, for which queries, which app pages are most popular, and which ones have errors? Yeah, we thought so too! So we’ve equipped our freshly renamed Search Console with new reports to show you how Google understands and treats your app content in search results.
Our goal is to make Search Console a comprehensive source of information for everyone who cares about search, regardless of the format of their content. So, if you own or develop an app, Search Console is your new go-to place for search stats.

Add your app to Search Console

Simply open Search Console and enter your app name: android-app://com.example. Of course, we’ll only show data to authorized app owners, so you need to use your Google Play account to let Search Console know you have access to the app. If you don’t have access to your app in Google Play, ask an owner to verify the app in Search Console and add you next.

Connect your site to your app

Associating your site with your app is necessary for App Indexing to work. Plus, it helps with understanding and ranking the app content better.

Track your app content’s performance in search

The new Search Analytics report provides detailed information on top queries, top app pages, and traffic by country. It also has a comprehensive set of filters, allowing you to narrow down to a specific query type or region, or sort by clicks, impressions, CTR, and positions.

Use the Search Analytics report to compare which app content you consider most important with the content that actually shows up in search and gets the most clicks. If they match, you’re on the right track! Your users are finding and liking what you want them to see. If there’s little overlap, you may need to restructure your navigation, or make the most important content easier to find. Also worth checking in this case: have you provided deep links to all the app content you want your users to find?

Make sure Google understands your app content

If we encounter errors while indexing your app content, we won’t be able to show deep links for those app pages in search results. The Crawl Errors report will show you the type and number of errors we’ve detected.

See your app content the way Google sees it

We’ve created an alpha version of the Fetch as Google tool for apps to help you check if an app URI works and see how Google renders it. It can also be useful for comparing the app content with the webpage content to debug errors such as content mismatch. In many cases, the mismatch errors are caused by blocked resources within the app or by pop-ups asking users to sign in or register. Now you can see and resolve these issues.

To get started on optimizing and troubleshooting your own app, add it to Search Console now. If you want to know more about App Indexing, read about it on our Developer Site. And, as always, you’re welcome to drop by the help forum with more questions.

Posted by:
Hillel Maoz, Engineering Lead, Search Console Team (favorite app: Flipboard) and
Mariya Moeva, Webmaster Trends Analyst (favorite app: Spotify)

Faster and lighter mobile web pages for Indonesia

Thursday, April 30, 2015

We believe everyone should have fast and easy access to information online. However, many people still have slow and costly mobile connections. To speed up the experience of our users on slow connections, we recently launched streamlined search results. However, we wondered if we could also speed up the web pages themselves, so they don't load slowly or consume too much mobile data. So we’ve developed a way to optimize web pages to be faster and lighter, while preserving most of the relevant content. In two weeks, we’re starting a field test in Indonesia to provide streamlined search results and optimized pages when the user searches on slow mobile connections, such as 2G. Our experiments show that optimized pages load four times faster than the original page and use 80% fewer bytes. As our users’ overall experience became faster, we saw a 50% increase in traffic to these optimized pages.

These faster optimized pages help publishers and advertisers reach new audiences. In addition, a link to the original page will always be available, so users can still choose to view that version. Publishers, you can preview how your page will look in this optimized format by visiting our help page for webmasters. If you would prefer your pages not be optimized, the help page also provides the relevant details on how to opt out.Webmasters can continue to monetize their content with these optimized pages. We have been working with Zedo and Sovrn to support their ads along with AdSense, and we are working to support DoubleClick for Publishers as well. We're just getting started, but hope to add support for other ad networks. If you are interested in getting your ad network supported, please see our help page for ad networks for more details on how to contact us.Update on June 11, 2015: Following the successful field test in Indonesia, soon we will be bringing this feature to India and Brazil.Posted by Ram Ramani and Hiroto Tokusei

Rolling out the mobile-friendly update

Tuesday, April 21, 2015

As we noted earlier this year, today’s the day we begin globally rolling out our mobile-friendly update. We’re boosting the ranking of mobile-friendly pages on mobile search results. Now searchers can more easily find high-quality and relevant results where text is readable without tapping or zooming, tap targets are spaced appropriately, and the page avoids unplayable content or horizontal scrolling.

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April 21st’s mobile-friendly update boosts mobile search rankings for pages that are legible and usable on mobile devices.

This update:

Affects only search rankings on mobile devices
Affects search results in all languages globally
Applies to individual pages, not entire websites

While the mobile-friendly change is important, we still use a variety of signals to rank search results. The intent of the search query is still a very strong signal -- so even if a page with high quality content is not mobile-friendly, it could still rank high if it has great content for the query.

To check if your site is mobile-friendly, you can examine individual pages with the Mobile-Friendly Test or check the status of your entire site through the Mobile Usability report in Webmaster Tools. If your site’s pages aren’t mobile-friendly, there may be a significant decrease in mobile traffic from Google Search. But have no fear, once your site becomes mobile-friendly, we will automatically re-process (i.e., crawl and index) your pages. You can also expedite the process by using Fetch as Google with Submit to Index, and then your pages can be treated as mobile-friendly in ranking.

Questions? See our FAQ or ask on the Mobile Websites section of the Webmaster Forum.

Posted by Takaki Makino and Doantam Phan

FAQs about the April 21st mobile-friendly update

Tuesday, April 21, 2015

We’d like to share answers to your frequently asked questions. For background, in February, we announced that the mobile-friendly update will boost the rankings of mobile-friendly pages -- pages that are legible and usable on mobile devices -- in mobile search results worldwide. (Conversely, pages designed for only large screens may see a significant decrease in rankings in mobile search results.) To get us all on the same page, here are the most frequently asked questions:

General FAQs

1. Will desktop and/or tablet ranking also be affected by this change?

No, this update has no effect on searches from tablets or desktops. It affects searches from mobile devices across all languages and locations.

2. Is it a page-level or site-level mobile ranking boost?

It’s a page-level change. For instance, if ten of your site’s pages are mobile-friendly, but the rest of your pages aren’t, only the ten mobile-friendly pages can be positively impacted.

3. How do I know if Google thinks a page on my site is mobile-friendly?

Individual pages can be tested for “mobile-friendliness” using the Mobile-Friendly Test.

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Test individual URLs in real-time with the Mobile-Friendly Test.

To review site-level information on mobile-friendliness, check out the Mobile Usability report in Webmaster Tools. This feature’s data is based on the last time we crawled and indexed your site’s pages.

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Mobile Usability in Webmaster Tools provides a snapshot of your entire site’s mobile-friendliness.

4. Unfortunately, my mobile-friendly pages won’t be ready until after April 21st. How long before they can be considered mobile-friendly in ranking?

We determine whether a page is mobile-friendly every time it’s crawled and indexed -- you don’t have to wait for another update. Once a page is mobile-friendly, you can wait for Googlebot for smartphones to naturally (re-)crawl and index the page or you can expedite processing by using Fetch as Google with Submit to Index in Webmaster Tools. For a large volume of URLs, consider submitting a sitemap. In the sitemap, if your mobile content uses pre-existing URLs (such as with Responsive Web Design or dynamic serving), also include the lastmod tag.

5. Since the mobile ranking change rolls out on April 21st, if I see no drop in traffic on April 22nd, does that mean that my site’s rankings aren't impacted?

You won't be able to definitively determine whether your site’s rankings are impacted by the mobile-friendly update by April 22nd. While we begin rolling out the mobile-friendly update on April 21st, it’ll be a week or so before it makes its way to all pages in the index.

6. I have a great mobile site, but the Mobile-Friendly Test tells me that my pages aren't mobile-friendly. Why?

If a page is designed to work well on mobile devices, but it’s not passing the Mobile-Friendly Test, the most common reason is that Googlebot for smartphones is blocked from crawling resources, like CSS and JavaScript, that are critical for determining whether the page is legible and usable on a mobile device (i.e., whether it’s mobile-friendly). To remedy:

Check if the Mobile-Friendly Test shows blocked resources (often accompanied with a partially rendered image).
Allow Googlebot to crawl the necessary files.
Double-check that your page passes the Mobile-Friendly Test.
Use Fetch as Google with Submit to Index and submit your updated robots.txt to Google to expedite the re-processing of the updated page (or just wait for Google to naturally re-crawl and index).

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The most common reason why a mobile page fails the Mobile-Friendly Test is that Googlebot for smartphones is blocked from crawling resources, like CSS and JavaScript, that are crucial for understanding the page’s mobile-friendliness.

To reiterate, we recommend that site owners allow Googlebot to crawl all resources for a page (including CSS, JavaScript, and images), so that we can properly render, index, and in this case, assess whether the page is mobile-friendly.

7. What if I link to a site that’s not mobile-friendly?

Your page can still be “mobile-friendly” even if it links to a page that’s not mobile-friendly, such as a page designed for larger screens, like desktops. It’s not the best experience for mobile visitors to go from a mobile-friendly page to a desktop-only page, but hopefully as more sites become mobile-friendly, this will become less of a problem.

8. Does Google give a stronger mobile-friendly ranking to pages using Responsive Web Design (which uses the same URL and the same HTML for the desktop and mobile versions) vs. hosting a separate mobile site (like www for desktop and m.example.com for mobile)?

No, mobile-friendliness is assessed the same, whether you use responsive web design (RWD), separate mobile URLs, or dynamic serving for your configuration. If your site uses separate mobile URLs or dynamic serving, we recommend reviewing the Mobile SEO guide to make sure Google is properly crawling and indexing your mobile pages.

9. Will my site / page disappear on mobile search results if it's not mobile-friendly?

Specialized FAQs

10. What if my audience is desktop only? Then there’s no reason to have a mobile site, right?

Not exactly. Statistics show that more people are going “mobile only” -- either because they never had a desktop or because they won’t replace their existing desktop. Additionally, a non-mobile-friendly site may not see many mobile visitors precisely for that reason.

The mobile-friendly update will apply to mobile searches conducted across all sites, regardless of the site’s target audiences’ language, region, or proportion of mobile to desktop traffic.

11. I have pages showing mobile usability errors because they embed a YouTube video. What can I do?

We suggest paying close attention to how the YouTube video is embedded. If you are using the “old-style” <object> embeds in the mobile page, convert to <iframe> embeds for broader compatibility. YouTube now uses the HTML5 player on the web by default, so it’s mobile-friendly to embed videos using the <iframe> tags from the “share” feature on the watch page or from the YouTube iFrame API. If you have a more complex integration, that should also be mobile-friendly, since it’ll instruct the device to use the device’s native support.

For Flash content from sites other than YouTube, check if there is an equivalent HTML5 embed tag or code snippet to avoid using proprietary plugins.

12. Is there a clear standard for sizing tap targets?

Yes, we suggest a minimum of 7mm width/height for primary tap targets and a minimum margin of 5mm between secondary tap targets. The average width of an adult's finger pad is 10mm, and these dimensions can provide a usable interface while making good use of screen real estate.

13. To become mobile-friendly quickly, we’re thinking of creating a very stripped down version of our site (separate mobile pages) until our new responsive site is complete. Do you foresee any problems with this?

First, keep in mind that we support three mobile configurations and that your website doesn't have to be responsive to be mobile-friendly. In response to your question, please be cautious about creating a “stripped down” version of your site. While the page may be formatted for mobile, if it doesn’t allow your visitors to easily complete their common tasks or have an overall smooth workflow, it may become frustrating to your visitors and perhaps not worth the effort. Should a temporary mobile site be created, once the RWD is live, be sure to move the site properly. For example, update all links so they no longer reference the separate mobile URLs and 301 redirect mobile URLs to their corresponding RWD version.

Recommendations

If you’re totally new to building a mobile-friendly site, it’s not too late! Check out our Getting Started guide in the Mobile-Friendly Websites documentation.

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Get started on your mobile site at https://developers.google.com/webmasters/mobile-sites/.

If you already have a mobile site, investigate the Mobile Usability report in Webmaster Tools to make sure that Google detects your site’s pages as mobile-friendly.

Still more questions? Please ask below or check out the Mobile Websites section of the Webmaster Forum.

Written by Maile Ohye, Developer Programs Tech Lead.

Helping users fill out online forms

Tuesday, March 17, 2015

A lot of websites rely on forms for important goals completion, such as completing a transaction on a shopping site or registering on a news site. For many users, online forms mean repeatedly typing common information like their names, emails, phone numbers or addresses, on different sites across the web. In addition to being tedious, this task is also error-prone, which can lead many users to abandon the flow entirely. In a world where users browse the internet using their mobile devices more than their laptops or desktops, having forms that are easy and quick to fill out is crucial! Three years ago, we announced the support for a new “autocomplete” attribute in Chrome, to make form-filling faster, easier and smarter. Now, Chrome fully supports the "autocomplete" attribute for form fields according to the current WHATWG HTML Standard. This allows webmasters and web developers to label input element fields with common data types, such as ‘name’ or ‘street-address’, without changing the user interface or the backend. Numerous webmasters have increased the rate of form completions on their sites by marking up their forms for auto-completion. For example, marking up an email address field on a form to allow auto-completion would look like this (with a full sample form available): <input type="email" name="customerEmail" autocomplete="email"/>

Making websites friendly and easy to browse for users on mobile devices is very important. We hope to see many forms marked up with the “autocomplete” attribute in the future. For more information, you can check out our specifications about Label and name inputs in Web Fundamentals. And as usual, if you have any questions, please post in our Webmasters Help Forums.Posted by Mathieu Perreault, Chrome Software Engineer, and Zineb Ait Bahajji, Webmaster Trends Analyst

Finding more mobile-friendly search results

Thursday, February 26, 2015

Webmaster level: allWhen it comes to search on mobile devices, users should get the most relevant and timely results, no matter if the information lives on mobile-friendly web pages or apps. As more people use mobile devices to access the internet, our algorithms have to adapt to these usage patterns. In the past, we’ve made updates to ensure a site is configured properly and viewable on modern devices. We’ve made it easier for users to find mobile-friendly web pages and we’ve introduced App Indexing to surface useful content from apps. Today, we’re announcing two important changes to help users discover more mobile-friendly content: 1. More mobile-friendly websites in search resultsStarting April 21, we will be expanding our use of mobile-friendliness as a ranking signal. This change will affect mobile searches in all languages worldwide and will have a significant impact in our search results. Consequently, users will find it easier to get relevant, high quality search results that are optimized for their devices. To get help with making a mobile-friendly site, check out our guide to mobile-friendly sites. If you’re a webmaster, you can get ready for this change by using the following tools to see how Googlebot views your pages:

If you want to test a few pages, you can use the Mobile-Friendly Test.

If you have a site, you can use your Webmaster Tools account to get a full list of mobile usability issues across your site using the Mobile Usability Report.

2. More relevant app content in search resultsStarting today, we will begin to use information from indexed apps as a factor in ranking for signed-in users who have the app installed. As a result, we may now surface content from indexed apps more prominently in search. To find out how to implement App Indexing, which allows us to surface this information in search results, have a look at our step-by-step guide on the developer site. If you have questions about either mobile-friendly websites or app indexing, we’re always happy to chat in our Webmaster Help Forum.Posted by Takaki Makino, Chaesang Jung, and Doantam Phan

Tracking mobile usability in Webmaster Tools

Wednesday, October 29, 2014

Webmaster Level: intermediateMobile is growing at a fantastic pace - in usage, not just in screen size. To keep you informed of issues mobile users might be seeing across your website, we've added the Mobile Usability feature to Webmaster Tools. The new feature shows mobile usability issues we’ve identified across your website, complete with graphs over time so that you see the progress that you've made. A mobile-friendly site is one that you can easily read & use on a smartphone, by only having to scroll up or down. Swiping left/right to search for content, zooming to read text and use UI elements, or not being able to see the content at all make a site harder to use for users on mobile phones. To help, the Mobile Usability reports show the following issues: Flash content, missing viewport (a critical meta-tag for mobile pages), tiny fonts, fixed-width viewports, content not sized to viewport, and clickable links/buttons too close to each other.

We strongly recommend you take a look at these issues in Webmaster Tools, and think about how they might be resolved; sometimes it's just a matter of tweaking your site's template! More information on how to make a great mobile-friendly website can be found in our Web Fundamentals website (with more information to come soon).If you have any questions, feel free to join us in our webmaster help forums (on your phone too)!Posted by John Mueller, Webmaster Trends Analyst, Zurich

Android app indexing is now open for everyone!

Wednesday, June 25, 2014

Webmaster level: All

Do you have an Android app in addition to your website? You can now connect the two so that users searching from their smartphones and tablets can easily find and reach your app content.

App deep links in search results help your users find your content more easily and re-engage with your app after they’ve installed it. As a site owner, you can show your users the right content at the right time — by connecting pages of your website to the relevant parts of your app you control when your users are directed to your app and when they go to your website.

Hundreds of apps have already implemented app indexing. This week at Google I/O, we’re announcing a set of new features that will make it even easier to set up deep links in your app, connect your site to your app, and keep track of performance and potential errors.

Getting started is easy

We’ve greatly simplified the process to get your app deep links indexed. If your app supports HTTP deep linking schemes, here’s what you need to do:

As we index your URLs, we’ll discover and index the app / site connections and may begin to surface app deep links in search results.

We can discover and index your app deep links on our own, but we recommend you publish the deep links. This is also the case if your app only supports a custom deep link scheme. You can publish them in one of the following ways:

Add a rel=alternate <link> element to specify the corresponding app URI.
You can insert it in the <head> section of each web page, or in your sitemap. Find out how to implement these methods on our developer site.
Use the App indexing API

There’s one more thing: we’ve added a new feature in Webmaster Tools to help you debug any issues that might arise during app indexing. It will show you what type of errors we’ve detected for the app page-web page pairs, together with example app URIs so you can debug:

We’ll also give you detailed instructions on how to debug each issue, including a QR code for the app deep links, so you can easily open them on your phone or tablet. We’ll send you Webmaster Tools error notifications as well, so you can keep up to date.

Give app indexing a spin, and as always, if you need more help ask questions on the Webmaster help forum.

Posted by Mariya Moeva, Webmaster Trends Analyst

Directing smartphone users to the page they actually wanted

Wednesday, June 04, 2014

Webmaster level: all

Have you ever used Google Search on your smartphone and clicked on a promising-looking result, only to end up on the mobile site’s homepage, with no idea why the page you were hoping to see vanished? This is such a common annoyance that we’ve even seen comics about it. Usually this happens because the website is not properly set up to handle requests from smartphones and sends you to its smartphone homepage—we call this a “faulty redirect”.

We’d like to spare users the frustration of landing on irrelevant pages and help webmasters fix the faulty redirects. Starting today in our English search results in the US, whenever we detect that smartphone users are redirected to a homepage instead of the the page they asked for, we may note it below the result. If you still wish to proceed to the page, you can click “Try anyway”:

And we’re providing advice and resources to help you direct your audience to the pages they want. Here’s a quick rundown:

1. Do a few searches on your own phone (or with a browser set up to act like a smartphone) and see how your site behaves. Simple but effective. :)

2. Check out Webmaster Tools—we’ll send you a message if we detect that any of your site’s pages are redirecting smartphone users to the homepage. We’ll also show you any faulty redirects we detect in the Smartphone Crawl Errors section of Webmaster Tools:

3. Investigate any faulty redirects and fix them. Here’s what you can do:

Use the example URLs we provide in Webmaster Tools as a starting point to debug exactly where the problem is with your server configuration.
Set up your server so that it redirects smartphone users to the equivalent URL on your smartphone site.
If a page on your site doesn’t have a smartphone equivalent, keep users on the desktop page, rather than redirecting them to the smartphone site’s homepage. Doing nothing is better than doing something wrong in this case.
Try using responsive web design, which serves the same content for desktop and smartphone users.

If you’d like to know more about building smartphone-friendly sites, read our full recommendations. And, as always, if you need more help you can ask a question in our webmaster forum.

Posted by Mariya Moeva, Webmaster Trends Analyst

App Indexing in more languages

Friday, May 30, 2014

Webmaster level: all

In April, we launched App Indexing in English globally so deep links to your mobile apps could appear in Google Search results on Android everywhere. Today, we’re adding the first publishers with content in other languages: Fairfax Domain, MercadoLibre, Letras.Mus.br, Vagalume, Idealo, L'Equipe, Player.fm, Upcoming, Au Feminin, Marmiton, and chip.de. In the U.S., we now also support some more apps -- Walmart, Tapatalk, and Fancy.

We’ve also translated our developer guidelines into eight additional languages: Chinese (Traditional), French, German, Italian, Japanese, Brazilian Portuguese, Russian, and Spanish.

If you’re interested in participating in App Indexing, and your content and implementation are ready, please let us know by filling out this form. As always, you can ask questions on the mobile section of our webmaster forum.

Finally, if you’re headed to Google I/O in June, be sure to check out the session on the “Future of Apps and Search”, where we’ll share some more updates on App Indexing.

Posted by Erik Hendriks, Software Engineer

Making your site more mobile-friendly with PageSpeed Insights

Monday, May 19, 2014

Webmaster level: all

To help developers and webmasters make their pages mobile-friendly, we recently updated PageSpeed Insights with additional recommendations on mobile usability.

Poor usability can diminish the benefits of a fast page load. We know the average mobile page takes more than 7 seconds to load, and by using the PageSpeed Insights tool and following its speed recommendations, you can make your page load much faster. But suppose your fast mobile site loads in just 2 seconds instead of 7 seconds. If mobile users still have to spend another 5 seconds once the page loads to pinch-zoom and scroll the screen before they can start reading the text and interacting with the page, then that site isn’t really fast to use after all. PageSpeed Insights’ new User Experience rules can help you find and fix these usability issues.

These new recommendations currently cover the following areas:

Configure the viewport: Without a meta-viewport tag, modern mobile browsers will assume your page is not mobile-friendly, and will fall back to a desktop viewport and possibly apply font-boosting, interfering with your intended page layout. Configuring the viewport to width=device-width should be your first step in mobilizing your site.
Size content to the viewport: Users expect mobile sites to scroll vertically, not horizontally. Once you’ve configured your viewport, make sure your page content fits the width of that viewport, keeping in mind that not all mobile devices are the same width.
Use legible font sizes: If users have to zoom in just to be able read your article text on their smartphone screen, then your site isn’t mobile-friendly. PageSpeed Insights checks that your site’s text is large enough for most users to read comfortably.
Size tap targets appropriately: Nothing’s more frustrating than trying to tap a button or link on a phone or tablet touchscreen, and accidentally hitting the wrong one because your finger pad is much bigger than a desktop mouse cursor. Make sure that your mobile site’s touchscreen tap targets are large enough to press easily.
Avoid plugins: Most smartphones don’t support Flash or other browser plugins, so make sure your mobile site doesn't rely on plugins.

These rules are described in more detail in our help pages. When you’re ready, you can test your pages and the improvements you make using the PageSpeed Insights tool. We’ve also updated PageSpeed Insights to use a mobile friendly design, and we’ve translated our documents into additional languages.

As always, if you have any questions or feedback, please post in our discussion group.

Posted by Matthew Steele and Doantam Phan, PageSpeed Insights team

App Indexing updates

Thursday, April 03, 2014

Webmaster Level: Advanced

In October, we announced guidelines for App Indexing for deep linking directly from Google Search results to your Android app. Thanks to all of you that have expressed interest. We’ve just enabled 20+ additional applications that users will soon see app deep links for in Search Results, and starting today we’re making app deep links to English content available globally.

We’re continuing to onboard more publishers in all languages. If you haven’t added deep link support to your Android app or specified these links on your website or in your Sitemaps, please do so and then notify us by filling out this form.

Here are some best practices to consider when adding deep links to your sitemap or website:

When Google indexes content from your app, your app will need to make HTTP requests that it usually makes under normal operation. These requests will appear to your servers as originating from Googlebot. Therefore, your server's robots.txt file must be configured properly to allow these requests.

Finally, please make sure the back button behavior of your app leads directly back to the search results page.

For more details on implementation, visit our updated developer guidelines. And, as always, you can ask questions on the mobile section of our webmaster forum.

Posted by Michael Xu, Software Engineer

A new Googlebot user-agent for crawling smartphone content

Thursday, January 23, 2014

Webmaster level: AdvancedOver the years, Google has used different crawlers to crawl and index content for feature phones and smartphones. These mobile-specific crawlers have all been referred to as Googlebot-Mobile. However, feature phones and smartphones have considerably different device capabilities, and we've seen cases where a webmaster inadvertently blocked smartphone crawling or indexing when they really meant to block just feature phone crawling or indexing. This ambiguity made it impossible for Google to index smartphone content of some sites, or for Google to recognize that these sites are smartphone-optimized.A new Googlebot for smartphonesTo clarify the situation and to give webmasters greater control, we'll be retiring "Googlebot-Mobile" for smartphones as a user agent starting in 3-4 weeks' time. From then on, the user-agent for smartphones will identify itself simply as "Googlebot" but will still list "mobile" elsewhere in the user-agent string. Here are the new and old user-agents:The new Googlebot for smartphones user-agent:

Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; CPU iPhone OS 8_3 like Mac OS X) AppleWebKit/600.1.4 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/8.0 Mobile/12F70 Safari/600.1.4 (compatible; Googlebot/2.1; +http://www.google.com/bot.html)

(updated August 2015)

Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; CPU iPhone OS 6_0 like Mac OS X) AppleWebKit/536.26 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/6.0 Mobile/10A5376e Safari/8536.25 (compatible; Googlebot/2.1; +http://www.google.com/bot.html)

The Googlebot-Mobile for smartphones user-agent we will be retiring soon:

Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; CPU iPhone OS 6_0 like Mac OS X) AppleWebKit/536.26 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/6.0 Mobile/10A5376e Safari/8536.25 (compatible; Googlebot-Mobile/2.1; +http://www.google.com/bot.html)

This change affects only Googlebot-Mobile for smartphones. The user-agent of the regular Googlebot does not change, and the remaining two Googlebot-Mobile crawlers will continue to refer to feature phone devices in their user-agent strings; for reference, these are:Regular Googlebot user-agent:
Mozilla/5.0 (compatible; Googlebot/2.1; +http://www.google.com/bot.html)The two Googlebot-Mobile user-agents for feature phones:

SAMSUNG-SGH-E250/1.0 Profile/MIDP-2.0 Configuration/CLDC-1.1 UP.Browser/6.2.3.3.c.1.101 (GUI) MMP/2.0 (compatible; Googlebot-Mobile/2.1; +http://www.google.com/bot.html)

DoCoMo/2.0 N905i(c100;TB;W24H16) (compatible; Googlebot-Mobile/2.1; +http://www.google.com/bot.html)

You can test your site using the Fetch as Google feature in Webmaster Tools, and you can see a full list of our existing crawlers in the Help Center.Crawling and indexingPlease note this important implication of the user-agent update: The new Googlebot for smartphones crawler will follow robots.txt, robots meta tag, and HTTP header directives for Googlebot instead of Googlebot-Mobile. For example, when the new crawler is deployed, this robots.txt directive will block all crawling by the new Googlebot for smartphones user-agent, and also the regular Googlebot:User-agent: Googlebot Disallow: / This robots.txt directive will block crawling by Google’s feature phone crawlers:User-agent: Googlebot-Mobile Disallow: / Based on our internal analyses, this update affects less than 0.001% of URLs while giving webmasters greater control over the crawling and indexing of their content. As always, if you have any questions, you can:

Read our recommendations for building smartphone-optimized sites

Learn more about controlling Googlebot crawling and indexing

Ask in our Webmaster help forums or visit one of our Webmaster Central office hours hangouts.

Posted by Zhijian He, Smartphone search engineer

Improved Search Queries stats for separate mobile sites

Tuesday, January 07, 2014

Webmaster ToolsSearch Queries

Queries where your m. pages appeared in search results for mobile browsers

Queries where Google applied Skip Redirect. This means that, while search results displayed the desktop URL, the user was automatically directed to the corresponding m. version of the URL (thus saving the user from latency of a server-side redirect).

Skip Redirect information (impressions, clicks, etc.) calculated with mobile site.Best practices if you have a separate m. site

Follow our advice on Building Smartphone-Optimized Websites

On the desktop page, add a special link rel="alternate" tag pointing to the corresponding mobile URL. This helps Googlebot discover the location of your site's mobile pages.
On the mobile page, add a link rel="canonical" tag pointing to the corresponding desktop URL.
Use the HTTP Vary: User-Agent header if your servers automatically redirect users based on their user agent/device.

Verify ownership of both the desktop (www) and mobile (m.) sites in Webmaster Tools for improved communication and troubleshooting information specific to each site.

Written by Maile Ohye, Developer Programs Tech Lead

Checklist and videos for mobile website improvement

Tuesday, December 10, 2013

full checklistStep 1: Stop frustrating your customers

Remove cumbersome extra windows from all mobile user-agents | Google recommendation, Article

JavaScript pop-ups that can be difficult to close.
Overlays, especially to download apps (instead consider a banner such as iOS 6+ Smart App Banners or equivalent, side navigation, email marketing, etc.).
Survey requests prior to task completion.

Provide device-appropriate functionality

Remove features that require plugins or videos not available on a user's device (e.g., Adobe Flash isn't playable on an iPhone or on Android versions 4.1 and higher). | Business case
Serve tablet users the desktop version (or if available, the tablet version). | Study
Check that full desktop experience is accessible on mobile phones, and if selected, remains in full desktop version for duration of the session (i.e., user isn't required to select "desktop version" after every page load). | Study

Correct high traffic, poor user-experience mobile pages

How to correct high-traffic, poor user-experience mobile pages with data from Google Analytics bounce rate and events (slides)

Make quick fixes in performance (and continue if behind competition) | Business case

How to make quick fixes in mobile site performance and compare your site to the competition (slides)

To see all topics in “Stop frustrating your customers,” please see the full Checklist for mobile website improvement. Step 2: Facilitate task completion

Optimize crawling, indexing, and the searcher experience | Business case

Unblock resources (CSS, JavaScript) that are robots.txt disallowed.
Implement search-engine best practices given your mobile implementation:
- Responsive design: Be sure to include CSS @media query.
- Separate mobile site: Add rel=alternate media and rel=canonical, as well as Vary: User-Agent HTTP Header which helps Google implement Skip Redirect.
- Dynamic serving: Include Vary: User-Agent HTTP header.

Optimize popular mobile persona workflows for your site

How to optimize popular mobile workflows using Google Webmaster Tools and Google Analytics (slides)

Step Three: Convert customers into fans!

Consider search integration points with mobile apps | Announcement, Information

Brainstorm new ways to provide value

Build for mobile behavior, such as the in-store shopper. | Business case
Leverage smartphone GPS, camera, accelerometer.
Increase sharing or social behavior. | Business case
Consider intuitive/fun tactile functionality with swiping, shaking, tapping.

Maile Ohye

Webmaster Central Blog