[Resolved] Problems with Google

Hi Michael,

Can you go through the steps here first?
https://docs.generatepress.com/article/text-too-small-to-read-and-clickable-elements-too-close-together/

Let me know 🙂

Hi Michael,

Can you check you robots.txt file and ensure that relevant resources including /wp-admin/ are not disallowed? This file can be found in the root directory of your website, along with your wp-config.php file etc.

Reference: https://docs.generatepress.com/article/text-too-small-to-read-and-clickable-elements-too-close-together/#blocked-by-robots-txt

Some needed resources may have not been loaded upon testing. See: https://share.getcloudapp.com/5zuPx58W

Because of this, the test result may be a false positive.

To change the font settings of a figcaption, go to Appearance > Customize > Typography, and create a new Typography rule in the Typography manager.

Set the Target Element to custom - figcaption, then make the modifications. Example: https://share.getcloudapp.com/6quGyD9n

As for the spacing for video embeds, try adding this in Appearance > Customize > Additional CSS:

figure.wp-block-embed.is-type-video {
    margin-bottom: 20px;
}

It shouldn’t be a Software issue. This CSS should add spacing under video embeds for all devices, no matter what the Software is.

Hi there,

When I see all 3 of those errors listed together then i know from experience it is rarely ever related to a specific setting on your site that needs addressing. eg. increasing a font size for example.

Instead, those errors are commonly reported together when Google Bot is not able to load the necessary resources e.g CSS stylesheets that are required to render your webpage correctly.

There are several reasons that those styles may not load, the main 3 are:

1. robots.txt was blocking Google from loading it.
Google mobile friendly test will report the issue as blocked by robots.txt
Your robots.txt is fine. This is not the issue.

2. server error eg. 404 or 503 etc.
Google mobile friendly test will report the issue as -- the relevant server error --
I checked your site for these issues and there were none.

3. Google Bot did not have the available crawl quota to load ALL of the necessary resources at the time of testing.
Google mobile friendly test will report the issue as Other

I am confident that the issue is #3. As it is for 99% of cases we see.

So what is happening here?
Google has limited server resources that it assigns to crawling and renderings sites. Some refer to this as the Crawl Quota. That Quota is split across many sites, and during busy times there is just not enough to go around, so it fails to load all the resources and moves on.

To confirm this is the case i ran a mobile friendly test on the URL you provided:

https://www.screencast.com/t/Z6zw8nEFOG0W

As you can see it passed, which means at this time Google had enough quota to load all the resources.
I also ran a Pagespeed (Lighthouse) test, and none of the above errors get reported.

So this is definitely a False Positive case for Google bot.

What can you do to minimise* the chance of this happening?

Build websites that require less resources to render correctly.
Optimize those resources so they have smaller payloads and can be loaded faster.
Run the site on a good server to minimise delays between requests and transfer.

I checked your site, and it is really well optimized, So nothing is required here.

* I say minimise, as you cannot STOP it from happening, as Google admit there servers and algos do get it wrong sometimes.

What to do next ?

Try recrawling those pages in the search console.

Try this CSS:

.wp-block-embed figcaption {
    font-size: 13px;
    text-align: center;
    margin-top: .5em;
    margin-bottom: 1em;
}