Archived topic
Text too small to read & Clickable elements too close together
19 replies · Started by Caro on October 21, 2021
Have a listen to Googles John Muller on this matter:
https://www.deepcrawl.com/blog/news/google-webmaster-hangout-notes-november-26th-2019/
It gives an insight on why these issues occur and what real problem it creates ( or not ie. it doesn't affect indexing ).
So theres a chance that Google Bot just cannot allocate the resources or has intermittent failures retrieving the necessary resources.
OR there is something else going on thats stopping them from loading. However this would generally report a different kind of error such as Blocked by Robot.txt or some other server response error eg. 404 / 500 etc. But none of the tested pages result in those errors.
Couple of things to try:
1. Ask the host to increase connection/request time - to something much greater. This will eliminate a time out issue.
2. Disable Plugins - off chance eg. Cookie plugin or something else is causing some issue.
3. Other than that i can't think of what else the issue would be aside from Site Security policies blocking google bot ... but i would expect that to have displayed a different error.
Hi David,
My host has been making some investigations —
He put just one link with an error ‚ https://www.thetwinklediaries.co.uk/how-to-upcycle-an-old-desk/ — into the Google search crawler — this is what he says:
Maybe I'm missing something here, but there doesn't seem to be a problem with the Google bot crawling your site. The logs show that the Google bot successfully crawled a whole pile of files which, together, build the web page....
e.g.
[29/Oct/2021:15:57:37 +0100] [66.249.66.7] thetwinklediaries.co.uk "GET /wp-content/themes/generatepress/assets/css/components/widget-areas.min.css?ver=3.1.0 HTTP/1.1" 200 695
[29/Oct/2021:15:57:43 +0100] [66.249.66.7] thetwinklediaries.co.uk "GET /wp-content/themes/generatepress/assets/css/components/comments.min.css?ver=3.1.0 HTTP/1.1" 200 576
[29/Oct/2021:15:57:45 +0100] [66.249.66.7] thetwinklediaries.co.uk "GET /wp-content/plugins/cookie-law-info/public/css/cookie-law-info-gdpr.css?ver=2.0.6 HTTP/1.1" 200 4941
[29/Oct/2021:15:57:46 +0100] [66.249.66.7] thetwinklediaries.co.uk "GET /wp-content/plugins/cookie-law-info/public/css/cookie-law-info-table.css?ver=2.0.6 HTTP/1.1" 200 1743
[29/Oct/2021:15:57:50 +0100] [66.249.66.7] thetwinklediaries.co.uk "GET /wp-content/plugins/wp-rocket/assets/js/lazyload/17.5/lazyload.min.js HTTP/1.1" 200 2888
[29/Oct/2021:15:57:52 +0100] [66.249.66.7] thetwinklediaries.co.uk "GET /wp-includes/js/wp-embed.min.js?ver=680e7a6c1176411aa52e12adcc73fa25 HTTP/1.1" 200 765
[29/Oct/2021:15:57:54 +0100] [66.249.66.7] thetwinklediaries.co.uk "GET /wp-content/plugins/kadence-blocks/dist/blocks/tableofcontents.style.build.css?ver=2.1.15 HTTP/1.1" 200 1153
[29/Oct/2021:15:57:55 +0100] [66.249.66.7] thetwinklediaries.co.uk "GET /wp-content/uploads/2020/10/how-to-upcycle-an-old-desk-with-chalkpaint-before.jpg HTTP/1.1" 200 88069
[29/Oct/2021:15:57:57 +0100] [66.249.66.7] thetwinklediaries.co.uk "GET /wp-content/uploads/2020/10/how-to-upcycle-an-old-desk-with-chalkpaint-during-9.jpg HTTP/1.1" 200 95298
[29/Oct/2021:15:57:59 +0100] [66.249.66.7] thetwinklediaries.co.uk "GET /wp-content/uploads/2014/03/how-to-upcycle-an-old-desk-with-chalkpaint-fin-9.jpg HTTP/1.1" 200 67721
[29/Oct/2021:15:58:01 +0100] [66.249.66.7] thetwinklediaries.co.uk "GET /wp-content/uploads/2020/10/how-to-upcycle-an-old-desk-with-chalkpaint-during-9.jpg HTTP/1.1" 200 95298
[29/Oct/2021:15:58:02 +0100] [66.249.66.7] thetwinklediaries.co.uk "GET /wp-content/uploads/2020/10/how-to-upcycle-an-old-desk-with-chalkpaint-during-8.jpg HTTP/1.1" 200 80601
[29/Oct/2021:15:58:04 +0100] [66.249.66.7] thetwinklediaries.co.uk "GET /wp-content/uploads/2020/10/how-to-upcycle-an-old-desk-with-chalkpaint-during-5.jpg HTTP/1.1" 200 61452
[29/Oct/2021:15:58:06 +0100] [66.249.66.7] thetwinklediaries.co.uk "GET /wp-content/uploads/2020/10/how-to-upcycle-an-old-desk-with-chalkpaint-after-4.jpg HTTP/1.1" 200 64172
[29/Oct/2021:15:58:07 +0100] [66.249.66.7] thetwinklediaries.co.uk "GET /wp-content/uploads/2020/10/how-to-upcycle-an-old-desk-with-chalkpaint-during-7.jpg HTTP/1.1" 200 64565
[29/Oct/2021:15:58:09 +0100] [66.249.66.7] thetwinklediaries.co.uk "GET /wp-content/uploads/2020/10/how-to-upcycle-an-old-desk-with-chalkpaint-during.jpg HTTP/1.1" 200 87164
[29/Oct/2021:15:58:11 +0100] [66.249.66.7] thetwinklediaries.co.uk "GET /wp-content/uploads/2020/10/how-to-upcycle-an-old-desk-with-chalkpaint-before-2.jpg HTTP/1.1" 200 44613
[29/Oct/2021:15:58:14 +0100] [66.249.66.7] thetwinklediaries.co.uk "GET /wp-content/uploads/2021/06/Decorating-a-caravan-interior-the-twinkle-diaries-uk-lifestyle-blog-300x300.jpg HTTP/1.1" 200 19865
[29/Oct/2021:15:58:16 +0100] [66.249.66.7] thetwinklediaries.co.uk "GET /wp-content/uploads/2018/08/big-hare-care-review-medusa-arms-the-twinkle-diaries-300x300.jpg HTTP/1.1" 200 19968
[29/Oct/2021:15:58:17 +0100] [66.249.66.7] thetwinklediaries.co.uk "GET /wp-content/uploads/2021/05/how-to-paint-a-caravan-exterior-feartured-300x300.jpg HTTP/1.1" 200 15384
[29/Oct/2021:15:58:19 +0100] [66.249.66.7] thetwinklediaries.co.uk "GET /wp-content/uploads/2020/10/how-to-upcycle-an-old-desk-with-chalkpaint-during-5.jpg HTTP/1.1" 200 61452
[29/Oct/2021:15:58:51 +0100] [66.249.66.7] thetwinklediaries.co.uk "GET /category-caravan-love/ HTTP/1.1" 200 26056
[29/Oct/2021:15:58:55 +0100] [66.249.66.7] thetwinklediaries.co.uk "GET /wp-content/uploads/generatepress/style.min.css?ver=1635519287 HTTP/1.1" 200 2324
[29/Oct/2021:15:59:03 +0100] [66.249.66.7] thetwinklediaries.co.uk "GET /looking-as-young-as-you-feel-sanctuary-spa-products-review/ HTTP/1.1" 200 29685
[29/Oct/2021:15:59:04 +0100] [66.249.66.7] thetwinklediaries.co.uk "GET /looking-as-young-as-you-feel-sanctuary-spa-products-review/ HTTP/1.1" 200 29707
[29/Oct/2021:15:59:06 +0100] [66.249.66.7] thetwinklediaries.co.uk "GET /wp-content/uploads/generatepress/style.min.css?ver=1635519287 HTTP/1.1" 200 2324
[29/Oct/2021:15:59:07 +0100] [66.249.66.7] thetwinklediaries.co.uk "GET /wp-content/themes/generatepress/assets/css/components/comments.min.css?ver=3.1.0 HTTP/1.1" 200 576
[29/Oct/2021:15:59:10 +0100] [66.249.66.7] thetwinklediaries.co.uk "GET /wp-content/plugins/gp-premium/blog/functions/css/featured-images.min.css?ver=2.1.1 HTTP/1.1" 200 503
The bold 200 status shows that the bot was successfully able to get at the file, i.e. the web server duly served it up when it was asked to.
Nothing has blocked the bot at all here, however the issues that the search console are unrelated to bot blocking or security policies....
Crawl
check_circle
Crawled successfully on 29 Oct 2021, 15:57:35
Crawled as
Googlebot smartphone
Crawl allowed?
Yes
Page fetch
Successful
Indexing allowed?
Yes
HTTP RESPONSE
Issues
error
Text too small to read
error
Clickable elements too close together
The bot is suggesting that the text is too small and that the clickable elements are too close together.
In reply to what your developer has said....
-
So theres a chance that Google Bot just cannot allocate the resources or has intermittent failures retrieving the necessary resources.
I would highly doubt that the Google Bot cannot allocate resources or has any intermittent failures.
OR there is something else going on that's stopping them from loading. However this would generally report a different kind of error such as Blocked by Robot.txt or some other server response error eg. 404 / 500 etc. But none of the tested pages result in those errors.
There is indeed a dynamic robots.txt file applied, but this shouldn't be blocking any Google crawlers. It's in place only to block that bad crawlers. You can view the file here....
https://www.thetwinklediaries.co.uk/robots.txt
Couple of things to try:
-
1. Ask the host to increase connection/request time – to something much greater. This will eliminate a time out issue.
I've increased this to 600 (default is 60 secs), but I don't think this is going to make a difference.
-
2. Disable Plugins – off chance eg. Cookie plugin or something else is causing some issue.
I'm still a little unclear as to what the actual issue is... Google is suggesting text too small / clickable elements to close together, so I'd imagine that's a css issue (which might very well be controlled by a plugin)
-
3. Other than that i can’t think of what else the issue would be aside from Site Security policies blocking google bot … but i would expect that to have displayed a different error.
I can't see any security policies which would be blocking Googlebot, but we can certainly see in the log files that Google is successfully crawling the page and returning Apache 200 status codes (This is a good status!)
I'm really stuck.
Would increasing the font size and line height solve this issue? If it's clickable elements and fonts that are too small — is that a fix for this?
So theres a chance that Google Bot just cannot allocate the resources or has intermittent failures retrieving the necessary resources.
I am just paraphrasing what Googles John Muller said ... and if he says it can happen i am not going to argue... he also states it should not be a concern trying to get a 100% pass rate.
And i just ran that URL that was erroring on Mobile Friendly test and got this result:
https://search.google.com/test/mobile-friendly/result?id=_5zCkMW6TLNZQbTUFQFtww
Personally as you only have a couple of errors in the GSC, and John says thats ok, and what was an Erroring page now passes... i would stop testing the pages, and see what happens in a few days.
Any errors you have in the GSC you can recrawl if you wish.
OK — thanks David. Will leave it alone and try not to worry that my site will be penalised. Fingers crossed it will go away as quickly as it came :)
Yeah its very frustrating as Google doesn't provide any reasons why its 'failed' - the very ambiguous Other error is a pain. But i seen others experience this issue, and its passed over time, so all should be good. Fingers crossed too :)
