Archived topic

I am getting that theme GP is not responsive for mobile on Search Console

8 replies · Started by Former User on January 24, 2022

Viewing posts 1–9 of 9

January 24, 2022 at 3:44 pm #2092342

Hello,

When I try index new article from my website on Google Search Console after clicking on Test URL button, I get a red exclamation on "Mobile usability" saying that website is "Not Optimized For Mobile Devices". Then when I click on it it tells me the following:

Clickable items are too close to each other.
The text is too small to read.

How can I fix this error since GeneratePress is supposed to be a responsive theme and this thing should be happening.

I am leaving you bellow one of the articles URLs that are giving me this issue so, you can take a look.

Thanks for your time,

Sara

January 24, 2022 at 3:54 pm #2092349

Hi Sara,

Please take a look at this article first: https://docs.generatepress.com/article/text-too-small-to-read-and-clickable-elements-too-close-together/

Let us know if there's anything you don't understand or unclear.

January 25, 2022 at 2:53 am #2092712

Hello Ying,

Thanks for the reply but, I don't understand what I am supposed to do, since for what I am reading the solutions would be the following:

1. Clickable items are too close to each other. Solution => Add a <meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1"> tag to the <head> of your document.

2. The text is too small to read. Solution => Increase the size of tap targets that are too small. Tap targets that are 48 px by 48 px never fail the audit.

But this is supposed to be done by GeneratePress theme, since GP is a responsive theme and should not give this problems and besides I cannot go article by article to add this tap targets code to fix it because I got over 100 articles and also I don't even know which ones to touch on the first one I guess can be added with an element.

Can you please explain to me why is this happening and how to fix it in a simple way.

Thanks,

Sara

January 25, 2022 at 4:52 am #2092838

Hi there,

first thing is to confirm is whether a) there is an issue with that pages mobile usability or b) Google is reporting a false positive.

First we:
1. Check the pate on a real world mobile device to see if there are any issues. I tested on 2 phones and through desktop developers tools. And i see no issues.

2. We run a Mobile Friendly test - see here:
https://search.google.com/test/mobile-friendly/result?id=r8rQXlZgSbx5X4ferbB6HA

That test passed.

Which means the site is OK, and Google is throwing a false positive.
Why does this happen? Who really knows, as Google isn't very open about how its algorithms or processes work. But many experts talk about crawl budgets and Google Bot not having enough resources available at the time of testing. Which in turn means it didn't load all the resources required to render the page correctly, resulting in a failure. For some comfort on this matter Googles John Muller during webmaster talks has stated, these 'mobile usability issues' should be expected and they have no effect on crawling / ranking.

To minimise these false positives occurring you should look at optimising your site. Reducing any 3rd party requests to a minimum such as deffering Advert Scripts, loading Google fonts locally, avoiding social network plugins that have to talk to FB, Twitter etc.

January 25, 2022 at 7:57 am #2093220

Hello David,

So, if this is a false positive why it is happenning constantly? I don't get it.

Also about your solution of reducing 3rd party requests, since you tested my site what you recommend me to do?

January 25, 2022 at 8:47 am #2093291

So, if this is a false positive why it is happenning constantly? I don’t get it.

Unfortunately i cannot answer that, how Google operates is a complete mystery. But by optimizing your site should minimize it from happening.

Some pointers for optimisation:

Serving fonts locally is explained in this doc:
https://docs.generatepress.com/article/adding-local-fonts/

Deferring 3rd party scripts such as Google adverts can be done with a plugin like Flying Scripts:
https://wordpress.org/plugins/flying-scripts/

YouTube - you can stop its scripts loading until the user clicks a video with this plugin:
https://wordpress.org/plugins/wp-youtube-lyte/

January 25, 2022 at 11:46 am #2093506

Hello David,

Thanks for the information but, I am not sure if I should do this since fonts method is not recommended because of security issues.

So, I been trying to index today other new articles created this days and it seems like this happens in about 3 of 10 articles I tried to index on Google Search Console so, it seems to be as you see a false positive so, my question is would this articles that give false positive maybe when I tried to index them again if are not index would this error might not show?

Also, we are not using yet WP Rocket and CDN which we plan to put in the next month would that help fixing issue at all?

Thanks again,

Sara

January 26, 2022 at 3:34 am #2094067

Thanks for the information but, I am not sure if I should do this since fonts method is not recommended because of security issues.

I assume this is related to adding the additional mime types stated here. If so, thats only a concern if someone who has Admin access decides to upload a file that contains malicious code.

If you have any concerns with that then you can use the Child Theme as that doesn't require that code.

Alternatives are using the PerfMatters plugin which can automatically install the fonts for you.

You should recrawl pages that fail mobile usability once you have validated the page loads fine ie. like i did above. See here for more info:

https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/9063469?hl=en

From experience, if you're getting false positives on one day of testing, wait 24-48hrs at least before retesting. It mitigates the possibility that your site is failing because of google bot being super busy.

Also, we are not using yet WP Rocket and CDN which we plan to put in the next month would that help fixing issue at all?

Can't really answer that - as i don't use WP Rocket. But anything that makes real improvements to site loading should help.

January 26, 2022 at 4:01 am #2094102

Hi, sorry for spaming this David

Other thing you must check, Sara, is if the google bot is loading all the resources.
You can view it in search console, URL inspection, View Crawled page, More info.
My personal experience is that google bot don´t load the css, all or some of it, and text size or spaces are not applyed.

This archived topic is closed to new replies.

Start building better websites today.