4 replies to this topic

[alanden]

Question 1:

 

I've just built a mobile website to suppliment my traditional desktop site. The desktop site has a redirect script in each webpage, which reads the user's screen resolution, and when appropriate redirects them to the .mobi website (which is a completely separate domain and does have a .mobi domain name).

 

Will the redirect cause Google to think that the user is bouncing from that webpage - and increase my bounce rate while it reduces the user's time on site?

 

Question 2:

 

How does Google know that my .mobi website is supposed to be a dedicated mobile website (other than the .mobi)?

 

Note: I hope that I'm asking this in the correct place. I did a search and couldn't find anything on redirects except three questions from 2008 & 2009, and I wasn't able to add a question there.

[qwerty]

Googlebot mobile should also get redirected to the mobile site (assuming you're doing a good job of sniffing out mobile user-agents) when it requests the desktop site, and that should accomplish the task of letting Google know the mobile site is a mobile site.

 

But it's probably also a good idea to add switchboard tags to pages on both sites. That will indicate to Google that while the content on one site's page is more or less the same as what's on the other, it's because the sites are intended to be viewed by people using different hardware. There's a good overview of switchboard tags in this article.

 

I also think it's good to include a link to the equivalent desktop page on every mobile page. Some users of smartphones and tablets find themselves redirected to a mobile site and would prefer to be on the desktop version.

[torka]

I also think it's good to include a link to the equivalent desktop page on every mobile page. Some users of smartphones and tablets find themselves redirected to a mobile site and would prefer to be on the desktop version.

 

Absolutely! I've got a 10.1 tablet, and I hate it when I'm forced to a mobile site that is clearly laid out for a smartphone, with no way to get back to the desktop version. I've got my browser on the tablet configured to always request the desktop version of sites for that very reason.

 

--Torka

[alanden]

Thank you for your advice.

 

As far as I have experienced, the redirect code that I am using does not redirect for my 7" Nexus tablet. It does redirect for my Galaxy SIII and LG Motion cellphones.

 

I can install a link on each mobile page back to the equivalent desktop page, that will essentially turn off the redirect code on the main site, so the user isn't trapped in a never ending loop.

[qwerty]

Yes, you definitely don't want to create a redirect loop. One way to prevent that is to check the referrer. If they're coming from your mobile site, don't redirect.