Google mobile friendly testing buggy?

[JamesSC]

Because I've previously found evidence of Google blaming my Web site for problems that turned out to be transient flaws within Google itself which subsequently self-corrected with no action from me at all, I thought I'd ask if anyone else has been finding what appear to be false flagging by Google in their mobile friendly page testing.

I'm currently told that two out of many thousand pages in my WordPress blog are now, contrary to previously, not mobile friendly, specifically "text too small to read" and "clickable elements too close together".

With the remainder of my mobile friendly pages, Google fills the full width of the iconic cartouche representing a mobile device used to display rendering with the text of the page to be read. With the two, now mobile unfriendly pages, the page text is crammed into the left side of the cartouche only with the right half now filled with a color from my blog theme.

The mobile unfriendly pages have no elements distinguishing them from the mobile friendly pages: the fonts are identical, there are no weird HTML markups - in other words, nothing available to correct to satisfy Google.

My reflex, as I assume it is with many, is to assume that the fault Google finds is mine, not gargantuan Google's.

But I have repeated evidence of my own lying eyes from my own past experience that this can be a false judgement.

Anyone else seen this same mobile friendly problem, and, if so, how did you fix it, if only to make your Search Console look pretty again?

[not2easy]

If you are asking about the newly added evaluation tool in GSC, yes it is not accurate. They tell you that when you use it with the notes alongside their results. Something about insufficient data on mobile? All the delays I saw were due to having AdSense on the page. I ignore things like that. I do not think there is a way to make the GSC look pretty, but beauty is in the eye of the beholder.

You might have missed the discussion recently on the GSC Speed Report: [webmasterworld.com...]

[JamesSC]

not2easy,

I'm not exactly sure what you're referring to.

Under the third section Enhancements on the left side of the GSC there is the selection Mobile Usability, which opens to a report detailing pages Google deems valid and those supposedly with errors. Running a live test from within that Mobile Usability area defaults to the Google mobile friendly tool:

[search.google.com ]

It is this age-old Google mobile friendly tool which is rendering the supposed error page with all of the page crammed into the left 50% of the rendering area and with the right 50% painted with a monochrome color tastefully matching my theme palette. When logged out of the GSC the age-old Google mobile friendly tool returns the same distorted rendering and message.

By contrast, my humble LG mobile device with its 2 3/8 x 3 7/8 screen area renders the supposed error page perfectly, as it does all my other pages which Google also approves of.

There is nothing in my robots.txt file to influence the supposed error page any differently than any other page, and Google is given robots.txt access to all pages they suggest are critical for rendering.

I as an actual meatbag mobile user can apparently render the problematic page without the issues complained about; it is Google robotics which cannot.

But since Google has designated me a mobile first site, I reasonably fear that it may drop the page in question from its mobile indexing, even though the page has historically scored high in Google hits, has never been flagged as mobile unfriendly before the last several crawl, and has not been altered since 2012.

(By pretty I simply meant how to satisfy the Google robotics so that they would be as happy as the unencumbered humans like me having no trouble accessing the page.)

The question persists: which Google mobile friendly returns should I believe, and why?

[JamesSC]

So, to finalize, if necessary:

- I am not familiar with any new mobile usability evaluation tool in GSC as referred to by not2easy above. I would be grateful if someone could point me to it.

- I was not referring to the new speed evaluation report

- I was referring to the mobile usability report, which claims a page perfectly accessible on my own mobile device is unsatisfactory to Google and can only be rendered by Google in a distorted way which I cannot reproduce in real life and which I am clueless as to how to fix in order to satisfy Google

If anyone now or in the future has encountered these phenomena as I've described in granular detail above, I would also be grateful if you would please advise here how you either solved or merely dealt with the problem to your satisfaction.

Thanks all,

James

[NickMNS]

GSC is known for being buggy, specifically the mobile usability report. If you are sure the page is correct validate the fix and see if it returns. Generally if it was a bug it will not return.

Do note that there can be difference between what you see and what Google sees. This can be due to resource such as CSS files and others that may be blocked for Googlebot in the Robots.txt or by some other means.

[not2easy]

Google's mobile usability tool gives you more information than is visible at first glance. If you click on their results, they will show you what they see and it may look nothing like what you (or visitors) see. Click further on their results and you may see what they call blocked resources. If, for example you have your .css file in a directory that is blocking googlebot via robots.txt, that will give this error. If you are certain that there is nothing preventing Google from accessing the resource files (including images, css and scripts) then just click to validate your 'fix' even if you have done nothing.

As NickMNS mentioned, GSC is known for being buggy, specifically the mobile usability report. I've seen them claim the same for my own pages. Submit "Fix" and then it is fine - without any actual change.

[JamesSC]

Nick & Not, thank you for your responses. Drilling deeper based on your suggestions, here is what I found. A great deal of data follows, sensitive parts renamed, some or all of which may help explain how GSC MU is buggy.

"validate the fix and see if it returns" "Submit "Fix" and then it is fine"

I've done this previously with success. Not this time. This time I get

Performing quick initial validation
This may take up to a minute

followed by

Cannot continue validation process
Affected pages were found. Fix the issue and run validation again

Drilling down into more info:

Text too small to read - more info

Page resources
5/19 couldn't be loaded

Googlebot blocked by robots.txt [= [tbn0.google.com...]
Image
[tbn0.google.com...]

Googlebot blocked by robots.txt [= [tbn0.google.com...]
Image
[tbn0.google.com...]

That is, Googlebot was blocked by robots.txt - Google's robots.txt.

Other errors:

Other error
Image
https://www.example.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/HomePageImage1ValidAllOtherPages.png

Other error
Image
https://www.example.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/HomePageImage2ValidAllOtherPages.jpg

These are two standard front page images causing no mobile usability problems on any other pages.

Other error
Script
https://www.example.com/wp-includes/js/jquery/jquery.js

This is a standard WordPress file, not modified.

JavaScript console messages
4 messages

Error
00:03.000
Uncaught ReferenceError: _gaq is not defined at https://www.example.com/2008/08/12/[second-example.com-page-in-error]/:10:415
https://www.example.com/2008/08/12/[second-example.com-page-in-error]/:9

Warning
00:21.000
Mixed Content: The page at 'https://www.example.com/2008/08/12/[second-example.com-page-in-error]/' was loaded over HTTPS, but requested an insecure image 'http://tbn0.google.com/images?q=tbn:06w-4_EQrR6wQM:https://www.[remoteexample].com/images/members/00001179/Image.jpg'. This content should also be served over HTTPS.
https://www.example.com/2008/08/12/[second-example.com-page-in-error]/:0

Warning
00:21.000
Mixed Content: The page at 'https://www.example.com/2008/08/12/[second-example.com-page-in-error]/' was loaded over HTTPS, but requested an insecure image 'http://tbn0.google.com/images?q=tbn:uEJpD4JNBShXKM:https://www.[remoteexample].com/Admin/ImageGallery/[remoteexample]/[remoteexample]blog/Image.jpg'. This content should also be served over HTTPS.
https://www.example.com/2008/08/12/[second-example.com-page-in-error]/:0

Error
00:21.000
Uncaught ReferenceError: jQuery is not defined at https://www.example.com/wp-content/cache/PluginWithoutErrorAllOtherPages/js/PluginWithoutErrorAllOtherPages_d412539061f6876ae02101e5f0adb59a.js:2:1
https://www.example.com/wp-content/cache/PluginWithoutErrorAllOtherPages/js/PluginWithoutErrorAllOtherPages_d412539061f6876ae02101e5f0adb59a.js:1

So...errors caused by random mixed content (I am not pure; I have more) and by a plugin not implicated elsewhere in mobile usability.

Clickable elements too close together

Googlebot blocked by robots.txt [= [tbn0.google.com...]
Image
[tbn0.google.com...]

Googlebot blocked by robots.txt [= [tbn0.google.com...]
Image
[tbn0.google.com...]

That is, Googlebot was blocked by robots.txt - Google's robots.txt.

Other error
Image
https://www.example.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/HomePageImage1ValidAllOtherPages.png

Other error
Image
https://www.example.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/HomePageImage2ValidAllOtherPages.jpg

These are two standard front page images causing no mobile usability problems on any other pages.

Other error
Script
https://www.example.com/wp-includes/js/jquery/jquery.js

This is a standard WordPress file, not modified.

JavaScript console messages
4 messages

Error
00:03.000
Uncaught ReferenceError: _gaq is not defined at https://www.example.com/2008/08/12/[second-example.com-page-in-error]/:10:415
https://www.example.com/2008/08/12/[second-example.com-page-in-error]/:9

Warning
00:21.000
Mixed Content: The page at 'https://www.example.com/2008/08/12/[second-example.com-page-in-error]/' was loaded over HTTPS, but requested an insecure image 'http://tbn0.google.com/images?q=tbn:06w-4_EQrR6wQM:https://www.[remoteexample].com/images/members/00001179/Image.jpg'. This content should also be served over HTTPS.
https://www.example.com/2008/08/12/[second-example.com-page-in-error]/:0

Warning
00:21.000
Mixed Content: The page at 'https://www.example.com/2008/08/12/[second-example.com-page-in-error]/' was loaded over HTTPS, but requested an insecure image 'http://tbn0.google.com/images?q=tbn:uEJpD4JNBShXKM:https://www.[remoteexample].com/Admin/ImageGallery/[remoteexample]/[remoteexample]blog/Image.jpg'. This content should also be served over HTTPS.
https://www.example.com/2008/08/12/[second-example.com-page-in-error]/:0

Error
00:21.000
Uncaught ReferenceError: jQuery is not defined at https://www.example.com/wp-content/cache/PluginWithoutErrorAllOtherPages/js/PluginWithoutErrorAllOtherPages_d412539061f6876ae02101e5f0adb59a.js:2:1
https://www.example.com/wp-content/cache/PluginWithoutErrorAllOtherPages/js/PluginWithoutErrorAllOtherPages_d412539061f6876ae02101e5f0adb59a.js:1

So...errors caused by random mixed content (I am not pure; I have more) and by a plugin not implicated elsewhere in mobile usability.

My conclusion: I agree GSC-MU is randomly buggy. If I have unearthed anything you think I should have made better sense of and obtusely missed, by all means please advise.