I have two problems in mobile-friendly test
1- Content wider than screen
2- Clickable elements too close together
Hi !
I have the same problem. I hope there is an answer, because Google has penalized me. Thank you
Hi,
If the website resources are loading slow sometimes, or are blocked for some reason (by a robots file for example), there will be warnings or the page in question will be declared not mobile friendly
– https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/6352293?utm_source=search_console&utm_campaign=sc-mft-test
That may happen when testing with the mobile friendly tool, when the stylesheet loads slower, Google sees the page with the CSS not loaded. So most of the links will be detected as too close together, which does not happen if you check with an actual mobile phone.
Usually repeating the test the results will be different, for example when I test your website (@Aboda Magdy) the page is mobile friendly
– https://www.screencast.com/t/RfufPRQne3r
So the results from this tool would be somewhat inconclusive at times.
Having the mobile theme plugin active is a plus, this plugin was designed specifically for mobile so it is mobile friendly
– https://forum.tagdiv.com/the-mobile-theme/
Thanks
I’m having the same issue as well. 7 pages have been found with the error. And you are right, sometimes the test will bring back normal results and sometimes not. My robots.txt file is fine.
The question is, does Google penalize our sites because the errors are happening in the first place?
And I tried the mobile theme but do not like it. It feels unfinished. My site is already pretty simple so not worried about loading time.
Any solution to the mobile friendly errors?
@Joe Jerde From what I can find, the performance on mobile may influence Google search results by the algorithms they introduced a while ago
– https://moz.com/blog/mobile-first-indexing-seo
– http://theconversation.com/google-wants-more-mobile-friendly-websites-in-its-mobile-searches-40457
– https://www.searchenginejournal.com/flawed-google-mobile-usability-test-results/127623/
If you don’t like the mobile theme plugin, then the default responsive version of the website will be loaded on mobile devices, meaning the exact same content.
You could activate the AMP plugin, AMP posts will have priority in Google search results
– https://forum.tagdiv.com/tagdiv-amp-plugin-tutorial/
I receive the same problem as well. This will affect Google rankings, so now I wonder if I am forced to change theme on all (5) of my sites with Newspaper theme.
The speed on my site is fine.
I’ve went into Google Webmaster Console now and “verified” that I have fixed the issue. Although, I haven’t done anything to fix it.
I found an article where someone asks Googles John Mueller about this specific question.
John Mueller (Google) reply:
“Okay. Now I don’t know, how what the specific page would be and where that might be coming from. What one of the things that sometimes happens is we need to be able to fetch the CSS files for these pages as well so that we can see what they look like. And sometimes we either don’t have enough time to do that for your pages, or your server is a bit slow, and we don’t have enough capacity to get that very quickly. And then the test might fail. So if we can’t get the CSS, then it might look like the page isn’t really mobile-friendly. And usually this is something that settles down over time and maybe you’ll see individual pages that fall into the state. But in general, that’s something I wouldn’t really worry about. If the page is really mobile-friendly, if for the most part other pages on your website are seen as mobile-friendly, then that would generally be fine. It might fluctuate a little bit. You might see that as a warning in Search Console but I wouldn’t worry too much about it if you’re really sure that everything else is lined up properly.”
So hopefully I will not have to abandon this theme. 🙂
The only thing that worries me is that this is the only theme I use that I get this error. And I don’t put a lot of trust in what Google says as it’s always changing.
I have two other websites with identical setups (plugins, server, ect) besides the theme and they don’t get the mobile errors. So no question, it is a Newspaper theme issue.
That is true. Another common problem that Google has with Newspaper theme is the server 5xx-error. A lot of users have similar issues, if you check Themeforest comment section. Every site I’ve had with Newspaper theme have had 5xx-error, it took me a few hours to finally find a solution for it.
Just like you, I have same setups for all my sites – but the only ones that get errors in Webmaster console are the ones with Newspaper theme.
There will be overall improvements made in the theme in coming updates. It is true that the CSS has become somewhat large in size, there will be steps taken in this matter to reduce it. This should have a positive influence in the above issue as well. I can’t say much about it at the moment or exactly when it will be implemented.
Usually and from what I know from previous cases, most 500 errors are caused by low WP-memory, increasing it to a value of 256M or higher if possible solved the problem. This value would be enough for most websites. Of course these errors could be caused by other factors.
Hey Simion, good to hear about the CSS optimization and reduction. Always nice to know that the devs are looking for more ways to simplify for performance.
@Simion I had to make some changes to my robots.txt file due to the server 5xx-error. But, now I have undone those changes because they were blocking resources. Now, my question is: does the mobile theme plugin lead to “content wider than screen” & “clickable elements are together” problems in Search Console?
Although, I have now switched to the default version of the site but the page loading times on mobile have increased.
P.S: The mobile theme plugin did improve the page speed but does it render the site mobile friendly as well? What would you reckon?
@Mayank Bhatt The mobile theme is specially designed for mobile, it will display a simplified version of the website on mobile. This demo has the mobile theme active if you want to check it out with a mobile
– https://demo.tagdiv.com/newspaper_local_news/
So there should be no problems in the matter if the mobile theme plugin is used. You could give it a try.
Funny enough I am using a similar demo theme but am not quite sure what’s causing the errors. Could it be the robots.txt which was blocking resources? More importantly, could robots.txt also cause “clickable elements & content wider than screen” problems since I blocked the theme folder from being crawled?
I have used the same plugin and it was working absolutely fine until the 5xx server error cropped up. Also, the problems started only after I altered robots.txt file. Maybe that’s the issue. Might as well use the mobile plugin again though because of faster page load times.
But, could you please confirm my suspicion about robots.txt?
Any resources that are blocked are mentioned in the test
– https://search.google.com/test/mobile-friendly
Maybe check some guides as to what this file should contain in these topics I found
– https://mor10.com/robots-txt-might-be-ruining-your-mobile-friendly-ranking-with-google/
– https://www.ostraining.com/blog/general/google-mobile-robots/
– https://webmasters.stackexchange.com/questions/79822/how-should-a-robots-txt-be-for-a-wordpress-site-in-order-to-be-mobile-friendly
– https://mrvirk.com/seo/your-page-is-not-mobile-friendly/730/
– http://www.patnotebook.com/google-mobile-friendly-and-wordpress-robots-txt/
– https://www.hostinger.com/tutorials/wordpress-robots-txt#gref
– https://www.wpbeginner.com/wp-tutorials/how-to-optimize-your-wordpress-robots-txt-for-seo/
– https://yoast.com/wordpress-robots-txt-example/
@Simion I already corrected the faulty entry in my robots.txt and updated it as well. Heck, my mobile pages are also “friendly” according to Google’s own page friendly tests. But, Google is still showing that nagging error in at least 5 pages (not all luckily).
Maybe Google bot is having a rough day. Or, do I have to wait for a day or two, maybe?
You could wait for a while and monitor the situation, see what happens.
Replace your robots.txt file with this:
User-agent: *
Disallow: /wp-admin/
Allow: /wp-admin/admin-ajax.php
Sitemap: https://techraver.com/sitemap_index.xml
This will definitely fix the issues you are facing.
Thank you!
According to Yoast, there is no need to have any of that in the robot txt like it used to be. You can see that they don’t create any rules… https://yoast.com/robots.txt
@Amit Thanks but if you check my current Robots.txt file, it already comprises of these directives. Just had a word with someone over at Google Webmaster’s forum, they told me that this could take a while to get sorted. Maybe MANY weeks!
Seems like crawl bot is retrospectively detecting changes in my robots.txt file and then showing up errors.
Meanwhile, is there anything else that can be done to expedite the process? This all started with a Server 5xx error which keeps on coming back after 15-20 days. Although it’s fixed now, hopefully.
when is this problem going to be fixed. i am already seeing a lot of reviews from people saying dont buy this theme as the development team dont care about the issues. I would like to know if this is true and they are going to sort it out. the theme should be google friendly and not causing all these problems.
One recent post said the developer of the theme does not have a clue about seo and you should only buy a theme from people who understand seo. my traffic has dropped due to some problems generated by the theme. i keep seeing claims the theme will be improved but when will this happen
