Mobile Sitemap and URL count in WMT

[rubaduckyromeo]

I recently created a mobile version of my website. It uses the same urls as the normal version but detects user-agents and directs them to the correct template.

I created a mobile sitemap using google standards

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" ?>
 <urlset xmlns="http://www.sitemaps.org/schemas/sitemap/0.9"
 xmlns:mobile="http://www.google.com/schemas/sitemap-mobile/1.0">
  <url>
    <loc>http://mobile.example.com/article100.html</loc>
    <mobile:mobile/>
  </url>
</urlset>

However when I add the sitemap to webmaster tools it splits my sitemap into two categories.

1
/sitemap/mobile_sitemapindex.xml

Web
urls:64,102
indexed:55,456
Mobile
urls:64,102
indexed:0

I also have a normal sitemap in webmaster tools that has 64102 urls. Since the mobile and normal versions of my website share the same urls the sitemaps are almost identical.

Now webmaster tools shows I have double my web urls because of the mobile sitemap... anyone know what I am doing wrong?

[phranque]

if the mobile version of your site is on a mobile subdomain then it's not using the same urls as the normal version unless the normal version is also served from the mobile.example.com hostname.

[netmeg]

I dunno; I serve my mobile users on the same URLs and never needed a mobile sitemap.

But it looks like you're using a subdomain, and that's something else. In GWT, I would add that as a separate site entirely.

[rubaduckyromeo]

I am not using a subdomain. Both versions use www. I use a sitemap because I have around 64,102 urls. Do I not need a mobile sitemap? It seemed like the right thing to do.

[phranque]

this is why i thought you were using a mobile subdomain:

<loc>http://mobile.example.com/article100.html</loc>

you need to make sure your user-agent detection recognizes googlebot-mobile as getting served the mobile template.

this should cover most of your issues - Making Websites Mobile Friendly:
http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2011/02/making-websites-mobile-friendly.html [googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com]

[rubaduckyromeo]

Yes, I have tested fetch as googlebot and changed the setting to googlebot-mobile and it is getting the correct template.

I just don't understand why it would say i have urls:64,102 in web and urls:64,102 in mobile. All of those should be mobile.

So now those 64,102 "web" urls from my mobile sitemap are added to those from my web sitemap for a total of 128,204 "web" urls when it should just say I have 64,102 web urls and 64,102 mobile urls. No one else has had this problem?

[Andy Langton]

I think you're seeing a problem where it doesn't really exist - Google won't think that you have twice as many URLs and punish you in some way. You've simply submitted the number of URLs recorded by Google in Webmaster Tools, and Google will be able to crawl and index them separately (if necessary) via its desktop and mobile crawler respectively.

If I remember Google's guidance correctly, there is no need to submit a mobile sitemap for "smartphone" content - only if you wish to display for older feature phones. But in any case, IMO the count in Webmaster Tools is nothing to worry about - that's how many URLs you've submitted.

[phranque]

the indexed vs submitted statistics as displayed in GWT would be different for the sitemaps as crawled by each bot.