
Changes in rankings of smartphone search results - huskyr
http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com.br/2013/06/changes-in-rankings-of-smartphone_11.html
======
bru
Finally. Websites in the tech sphere are usually mobile friendly (because they
live on the edge of modernity or because they are bare bones and content-
centric), but "common" websites often offer a poor mobile experience. Google
penalising this is good news for the consumer.

However one point that is not addressed in the article: what about websites
that make you go through a first page/pop-up which proposes you to download
their app every time[1]? That is an annoying behaviour that I'd like to see
penalised as well.

And as usual there is a relevant XKCD comic:
[http://xkcd.com/869/](http://xkcd.com/869/)

[1] here, in France, most newspapers websites do this. Main result is that I
do not read news on my phone any more - not a big loss actually.

~~~
mattmanser
What? Google are dictating your technology solution here and penalising you if
you don't do exactly what they want.

This is bad news for consumers and web masters alike and they're dressing it
up as if it's the developers fault when a separate site is a perfectly
reasonable solution.

That some sites are still struggling to deliver a good mobile solution is
irrelevant and a red herring.

It's not Google's job to dictate our solutions. Do you not remember their
rubbish hashbang solution?

~~~
kevin_p
I think you're missing the point. This isn't about penalising having a
separate mobile and desktop site, or even automatically redirecting phone
users to the mobile site. It's about penalising sites that automatically
redirect all mobile visitors to the mobile version's homepage, even if they
tried to visit a specific sub-page (eg an article on a news site, product on
an e-commerce site etc) through Google search. Which already falls foul of
Google's existing rules against serving completely different content to
Googlebot and real visitors.

~~~
mattmanser
Oh, whoops, my bad.

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Udo
To be clear, they're punishing faulty redirects where visitors are clicking on
a search result and get forwarded to a completely irrelevant mobile page.
Personally, I hope mobile pages in general die a horrible death, but that's
probably decades away.

~~~
kristofferR
I'm pretty damn confident that the internet decades from now won't be a flat
box on a rectangular display like it is today. ;)

In 2040 the net will at the very least be seamlessly integrated into our eye
sight though lenses (or even digital eyes for the hardcore geeks), maybe even
directly feeding information into our brains.

~~~
sillysaurus
_In 2040 the net will at the very least be seamlessly integrated into our eye
sight though lenses (or even digital eyes for the hardcore geeks_

Like a science-fiction writer, one must be careful with predictive dates. The
best algorithm seems to be: take your initial guess and triple it. For
example, since 1984 was published in 1949, 3x that would yield 2089, which
seems a reasonable time frame to move our society from our current status into
the complete dystopia the book predicts.

So your digital eyes should be coming out in 2094 or so, shortly after the
Ministry of Truth begins erasing words from history books.

~~~
kristofferR
I did overestimate it. :)

I actually consider it very likely that good visual prostheses/digital eyes
will exist already in 2025, 2040 is more than 2x that (2025-2013=12 12*2=24
2013+24=2037)

Very primitive digital eyes already exist:
[http://www.extremetech.com/extreme/149106-the-first-real-
hig...](http://www.extremetech.com/extreme/149106-the-first-real-high-
resolution-user-configurable-bionic-eye)

I think it's quite likely that we're able to improve the technology a lot
quite quickly, a lot of projects doing just that is underway:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Visual_prosthetic](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Visual_prosthetic)

------
ars
Headline is inaccurate - they don't downrank for redirects. They downrank for
redirects to the mobile homepage instead of the mobile specific page.

I didn't see anything in there about app banners.

(In case it's changed the headline currently says: "Google downranks sites
that do mobile redirects / app banners".)

~~~
huskyr
Thanks, i've changed the headline.

~~~
danmaz74
To make it even clearer you could add an always: "... that always
redirect...". How it is now it's still pretty cryptic :)

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lignuist
Finally. This is such an annoying behavior. I wouldn't complain about a small
info bubble, but assuming that all visitors comming from a search engine want
to install an app before they even know the site is simply ridiculous.

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downandout
I can't explain how happy I am to see this. The fact that this has ever
happened on major sites shows the low quality of web developers currently
employed at huge sites. Once you understand the problem, it's a very easy fix
for a single developer, so this shows that in large, well-financed development
teams, not a single person recognized this as an issue. That is scary.
Hopefully these sites will be quickly purged from all results until they get
their act together.

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joshuak
Please. Don't. Make. Mobile. Versions. Of. Your. Website!!11!1!!!

Ask yourself, are you going to put in the same amount of design and content
work into the mobile site as the main site? Really? Aren't you just changing
the links to buttons, and reusing the content? Be honest.

The one exception is if you are implementing a proper full stack html 5
application. With truly valuable features over the standard website (but then
why haven't you done that for the main site too?). Even then, always have a
path back to the main site, and keep an eye out for how often that link gets
used.

~~~
jiggy2011
What is wrong with reusing content? When I visit a site on mobile I don't want
different content because I happen to be using a different device.

~~~
joshuak
Precisely. There is nothing wrong with reusing your content, so then why would
you need a new interface for it?

When you do truly need a new interface to something it's because the nature of
the something is different. True mobile apps don't use and apply content the
same as a web site any more then a video game is a movie.

~~~
jiggy2011
I don't think there's anything wrong with simply using the same content under
a different layout that is optimized for smaller screens/touch.

~~~
joshuak
I suggest you do a quick survey of the replies to this thread. Most people
HATE it. Apple designed a browser that addresses the size issue, no reason to
do it again poorly.

I also suspect that developers, such as myself, are looking at a site on
several platforms and so automatically compare them, but when a user focuses
on their phone it fills their perception.

Giving people bigger buttons, and text might seem nicer initially, but it's
usually very aggravating when the scaling is locked and with the real site you
can scale the text even bigger then the choice you made for the user. Plus
many other issues with content relationships (text and images say), usability,
etc.

If your designers are going to put as much effort into the mobile site layout
as they did to the main site then maybe, but I have yet to see that happen.

~~~
nexox
I find that many desktop websites are entirely unusable on mobile, because I
can't hover over menus without a mouse. Plus, I dislike waiting for 5MB (or
more) of webfonts, ads, and javascript to download over a mobile connection in
order to read a 3 paragraph blog post.

I don't see desktop sites getting smaller, and I don't think they should get
rid of hover-based navigation, so the solution could easily be a stripped-down
version for touchscreen devices on slow networks. That doesn't require huge
buttons, locked scaling, or high-end design and layout.

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buro9
This appears to cover automated (Location header) redirects, but it is not
mentioned whether it covers the far more numerous sites that use overlays to
advertise a mobile app and incorrectly redirect to the mobile home page when
the overlay is dismissed. Which is the same effect as the Location header
redirect, but far more annoying (as you actually got to see the content you
wanted for a brief moment behind the overlay).

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Uchikoma
Not happy with that decision. (We don`t do redirects)

After working for some time with iOS we recognized that an "app" suites our
customers on mobile better than a "site". So we have a classic website for
ecommerce, and a rich client application for mobile devices (HTML5, Angular).
Both have very different domains and layouts, there is no 1:1 mapping possible
except for the most basic features. The RIA page is optimized for gestures,
orientation changes etc.

Contrary to mainstream opinion we believe mobile (for ecommerce, where people
interact with a site, not newspaper sites etc.) is different from desktop
(mouse, keyboard, large screen) and not just a "responsive" small version of
your site (or desktop just a larger version of your mobile first site).

~~~
epistasis
As a mobile user, if I notice that I'm getting served different content and it
doesn't let me do what I could on the full site, it offends me so much that I
leave and do my best not to come back. Edit: the other thing that sends me
running are bad UI such as attempts at flicking left/right that interfere with
vertical scrolling, pages that can't be zoomed, or a page that changes layout
on orientation changes and keeps the font the same size. All of these are
anti-patterns from people that have thought shallowly about mobile but
mistaken it for insight.

Wikipedia has a horrifyingly bad iOS site, but it's the only mobile site I
return to; but there's no other site on the Internet that can do that.

~~~
coin
I could not agree more. I wish site authors would not waste thier time with
poorly mobile optimized versions. Just serve me the desktop version, my mobile
browser can handle it.

~~~
moepstar
I honestly wish i could upvote you more than once - exactly my thoughts.

I don't know, but it surely pre-dates the smartphone age when the installed
browser wasn't able to cope with a more or less fully featured website.

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homosaur
I'd like to also see downranking for sites that immediately send you to a
splash to download their stupid app, which is maybe the 2nd most profoundly
annoying mobile behavior. Most of these are doing this with JS overlays and
not actual URL redirects, so they won't be affected by this redirect penalty,
but lord how they should be.

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jamesjguthrie
I really dislike websites that present me with an 'optimised' mobile website
on my Galaxy phone. I'd much rather pinch and zoom than have less content than
the real website.

Also, websites that do this on my iPad Retina and make me choose the 'Request
desktop site' option REALLY annoy me. The screen's huge! There's no need for
it.

------
FollowSteph3
Am I reading this right:

"Unplayable videos on smartphone devices. Many websites embed videos in a way
that works well on desktops but is unplayable on smartphone devices. For
example, if content requires Adobe Flash, it won't be playable on an iPhone or
on Android versions 4.1 and higher"

So if your site has flash content and no mobile friendly version you're
penalized, well isn't this in essence saying you're being penalized to use
flash because almost no one who uses flash has a non-flash version. I don't
use flash, but a lot of sites do. Yes it's more for media but where and how
exactly is that line drawn....

PS: I think it's a good idea to penalize search results that redirects to the
home page for mobile users. You find what you're looking for in google, then
can only go to the landing page and good luck fr there. It's just silly.

------
bhauer
How about downranking sites that _do not_ redirect back to their desktop
variants when a mobile URL is shared and then consumed by a desktop user?
Mobile sites _can_ be consumed on desktop browsers, but the experience is not
always as good.

I find it odd that the redirect is typically only unidirectional.

~~~
exodust
Yes you're right that this is also a problem. Along with mobile versions of
sites that offer no link to the desktop and vice-versa. Some smartphone users
might not want the mobile version for whatever reason.

Luckily there's browsers such as Firefox for Android that allow add-ons. One
of the add-ons I have is called Phony which tricks the website into thinking
you're on a desktop browser. Often the browser's built-in "request desktop"
option is not good enough because the website uses modernizer or something
like that to determine if you're mobile.

------
brador
Any idea when Google will be downranking sites that pop up 'download our app'
alerts?

Also those annoying sites that load content using 10 second javascript loading
circles?

~~~
freehunter
"This forum has a mobile app! Click here to download Tapatalk for Android!"

------
hayksaakian
Thank god. If I'm on Google search, I want a proper web site.

------
huttondh
I think the important thing being discussed here is devaluing versus
penalization. Downranking sites because other sites are serving content/users
more effectively isn't a penalization it's a downrank. It's also no different
than your desktop site being downranked because someone has built a better
performing, better delivering site. Penalization is a completely different
animal where your site is removed from SERP's. It really just comes down to
creating a good user experience and they aren't going to value a mobile site
doing a catch all redirect to a mobile homepage just like they wouldn't carry
the same value for a desktop site that gets rebuilt and does a catch all
redirect from the old site to the new.

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bartkappenburg
The title is a (little) bit misleading. I should state: "Google downranks
sites that redirect all mobile requests to homepage"

Ie. There is nothing wrong with redirecting a mobile client to the mobile
homepage if the mobile user asked for the homepage.

------
philjackson
Good news. Something I also find frustrating is when this happens, so I click
back and it takes me to the place chucking the 302 causing the redirect again.
So, have to click back twice and hope it's quick enough to get me to where I
was.

------
matthewmacleod
Good, it's about time this happened. There's little more frustrating as a
website user than attempting to visit a page that precisely matches your
query, only to be forced to try and navigate there from the home page. Awful,
awful UX, and in some cases it is literally impossible to view content on a
perfectly capable device without switching browsers or UAs.

Ideally everything would be nice and responsive, although in some cases we've
found that the requirements of mobile users can be very different from those
of desktop users. Still a bit of a tricky nut to crack.

------
feintruled
Similarly, what's with Youtube videos that tell me "the user has chosen not to
make this video viewable on mobile devices". Why does Google offer such an
option, and why would anybody choose it?

~~~
bergie
Theoretically this could be a content licensing issue. Some music companies
for example could prohibit delivery to mobile as they want to squeeze separate
money for that.

------
hmottestad
I actually had the opposite problem when I was given a link to a mobile page
and opened it on my ipad. Then the page recognised that I was using an ipad
and redirected me to the front page.

The link is from a norwegian financial newspaper:
[http://mobil.dn.no/c.jsp?cid=25531331&rssid=25549661&item=ht...](http://mobil.dn.no/c.jsp?cid=25531331&rssid=25549661&item=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.dn.no%2Ffeed%2Fmobiletech%2Farticle%3Faid%3D2626780)

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Systemic33
> and at Google we want them to experience the full richness of the web.

Except when the smartphone is a Windows Phone, in which case Google is happy
to deliver a CSS stripped website to you.

Check a side-by-side iPhone | Windows Phone comparison:
[http://imgur.com/a/lquYZ#0](http://imgur.com/a/lquYZ#0)

~~~
sirn
Actually, they do that for all non-WebKit browsers. Firefox Mobile get this
too.

~~~
Systemic33
It's really an excellent example of Google's "Do no evil" is a joke.

Something about this quote seems very familiar... "You either die a hero, or
you live long enough to see yourself become the villain." \- Batman

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louischatriot
At last !

