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A bit off-topic, but I maintain three simple, static websites. Every few months, I get mail from Google, telling me of "new" reasons why these sites may not be

A bit off-topic, but I maintain three simple, static websites. Every few months, I get mail from Google, telling me of "new" reasons why these sites may not be ranked well in Google search. The reasons are nonsense, at least in my view. For example, suddenly the spacing between control elements is "too small" for mobile devices. It wasn't last month, but it is now. Or the font, or something else that hasn't changed in years. Other search engines (e.g., Bing) report no problems. More "change for the sake of change", but they want to force other people's stuff to change as well. Google hegemony can't end soon enough...

jesterson 3y ago
As someone who has few high load dynamic ones, I am getting those by dozens. Likely google "improves" the algorithm by which those are decided and voila. The good thing is I never got to spot any correlation between SERP and those "reasons".
chrismorgan 3y ago
Yep, seen all of these. Got a new one a couple of weeks back: some pages on my site http://www.example.com/ http://www.example.com/ aren’t being indexed because of “Page with redirect”. This is the http:// http:// → https:// https:// 301 redirect which has been in place since the day I created the site. But apparently Google forgot about it a week earlier, and then noticed it again and mentioned it. Some cases where I’ve seen “element too small” must indicate a bug in the browser or the measuring: no scripting, CSS failing to load wouldn’t make it any smaller, and the content is all after the meta viewport declaration (of course). So unless the entire thing is deliberately faked (which seems unlikely), it’s got to be a bug in the browser or measuring.
threeseed 3y ago
> but they want to force other people's stuff to change as well They aren't forcing you to do anything. They are simply informing you that they prioritise end user experience and that they will be promoting more usable sites ahead of yours. Because inadequate spacing between control elements is a fundamental user experience issue on mobile.
signaru 3y ago
Do these emails mention anything about content? It's scary if sites are actually ranked based on the spacing of control elements, fonts and such.
- bradley13 3y ago
  No, never had a content warning. It's always been something about the page structure. Annoying, because the structure hasn't changed in years - so why always new warnings...

jesterson 3y ago

As someone who has few high load dynamic ones, I am getting those by dozens. Likely google "improves" the algorithm by which those are decided and voila. The good thing is I never got to spot any correlation between SERP and those "reasons".

chrismorgan 3y ago

Yep, seen all of these. Got a new one a couple of weeks back: some pages on my site http://www.example.com/ http://www.example.com/ aren’t being indexed because of “Page with redirect”. This is the http:// http:// → https:// https:// 301 redirect which has been in place since the day I created the site. But apparently Google forgot about it a week earlier, and then noticed it again and mentioned it. Some cases where I’ve seen “element too small” must indicate a bug in the browser or the measuring: no scripting, CSS failing to load wouldn’t make it any smaller, and the content is all after the meta viewport declaration (of course). So unless the entire thing is deliberately faked (which seems unlikely), it’s got to be a bug in the browser or measuring.

threeseed 3y ago

> but they want to force other people's stuff to change as well They aren't forcing you to do anything. They are simply informing you that they prioritise end user experience and that they will be promoting more usable sites ahead of yours. Because inadequate spacing between control elements is a fundamental user experience issue on mobile.

signaru 3y ago

Do these emails mention anything about content? It's scary if sites are actually ranked based on the spacing of control elements, fonts and such.

bradley13 3y ago
No, never had a content warning. It's always been something about the page structure. Annoying, because the structure hasn't changed in years - so why always new warnings...