Mobile Site - Pros & Cons Of Using Auto Redirect

[juliat72]

Firstly can I ask for your clarification of the pending Google update - this is only going to affect "mobile/smartphone" usage and that searches done on tablets will not be penalized if you have an old site design that isn't "responsive"?

Secondly, I have used <external service that creates mobile site> to create a mobile version which is served automatically for a mobile phone user, I've fed the domain to Google's "Mobile-Friendly Test" and it says there are no issues - is it safe to assume that if I use this to do the same for all my old sites this will be ok and no further issues will arise, as obviously paying to use the service will become expensive as I have quite a few sites to deal with.

[edited by: aakk9999 at 12:55 pm (utc) on Mar 25, 2015]
[edit reason] Removed the actual name of the external service used [/edit]

[goodroi]

The only people that know for certain how tablets will be treated are the Google engineers. These engineers aren't always perfect. To be safe I am preparing for the most dramatic change which would include tablets.

I prefer to use mobile responsive design instead of redirecting to outside solutions. Some of those outside solutions have SEO problems. The worst case I saw was a client who hired a company to create a mobile solution. The result was a full-on duplicate content version on a different domain that outranked the client's real website.

[Kratos]

Where is the mobile version hosted? In your site as a subdomain or in another site (e.g. whoever sold you that service)?

Subdomain redirects are fine, but it's the easiest way to screw up something, and it also adds to user experience speed of page loading. I have seen some hug sites use redirects, and for a few I have seen the mobile pages rank above the desktop pages for desktop queries. This is bad since the mobile pages are not only (usually) less content-rich and have less useful navigation but also have less ads.

Be careful with redirecting.

Cheers

[not2easy]

a mobile version which is served automatically for a mobile phone user

- sounds like a bad user experience in many cases. Not all mobile devices have the same screen resolution and many do quite well in landscape mode on non-mobile friendly sites. Some users prefer to zoom to the content they want on a regular site and don't like having no way to see the desktop version.

Auto redirecting, if it does not take users to an equivalent page (if it sends them off to the mobile version's home page) is extra bandwidth to navigate to the page they clicked on, and should preferably be done with an option to stay on or return to the desktop site.

[juliat72]

No, the mobile site builder I was considering recreates the whole site, keeps all content the same but just makes everything fit a mobile screen and condenses the navigation, so if they were going to a particular page they would be served the mobile version.

Doesn't help that I can't name the program here

[Kratos]

Juliat72, is the mobile-rendered page going to be on your site? Or going to be on another site?

[phranque]

if you are hosting your mobile content on a domain that you don't control, you won't be able to redirect back to your domain when you decide to leave that service.