6 ms·

Finally. Websites in the tech sphere are usually mobile friendly (because they live on the edge of modernity or because they are bare bones and content-centric)

by bru 13y ago

Finally. Websites in the tech sphere are usually mobile friendly (because they live on the edge of modernity or because they are bare bones and content-centric), but "common" websites often offer a poor mobile experience. Google penalising this is good news for the consumer. However one point that is not addressed in the article: what about websites that make you go through a first page/pop-up which proposes you to download their app every time[1]? That is an annoying behaviour that I'd like to see penalised as well. And as usual there is a relevant XKCD comic: http://xkcd.com/869/ http://xkcd.com/869/ [1] here, in France, most newspapers websites do this. Main result is that I do not read news on my phone any more - not a big loss actually.

lostlogin 13y ago
If only they also down ranked site with total POS mobile sites. Extremely low res graphics, minimal information, massive text. I'm not blind. I'm not half brain dead. I'm just on a phone - your standard site is fine. Have a look at https://touch.trademe.co.nz/ https://touch.trademe.co.nz/
- pyre 13y ago
  Standard sites aren't always fine. For example, sites where the UI relies on mouse hovering.
InclinedPlane 13y ago
There's actually two relevant xkcd comics, here's the second: http://xkcd.com/1174/ http://xkcd.com/1174/
- slacka 13y ago
  I actually prefer the mobile versions that let you set font size on mobile. For example, when zoomed out in HN comments to a level where I don't need to scroll horizontally, the text is impossible to read on low DPI devices like my 3GS. HN would benefit from this. But I hate not being able to zoom. Perfect example, wikipedia. If sites offered a version like the iOS Safari reader gives you, they would be a plus. Unfortunately, most get it wrong.
  - drivers99 13y ago
    Speaking of wikipedia, another annoying bug is that when I go to a non-mobile URL with an anchor tag, it gets stripped out when it redirects to the mobile version of that page, so you end up at the top of the article and not the section you wanted.
  - jadyoyster 13y ago
    Good mobile browsers make sure every column of text gets reflowed to the width of your screen. Isn't this possible on iOS?
    - plorkyeran 13y ago
      No. Mobile Safari is not a very good mobile browser.
      - untog 13y ago
        If Mobile Safari is a bad mobile browser, what qualifies as a good one?
        jlogsdon 13y ago
        I've been using Firefox Mobile on Android with great success.
        plorkyeran 13y ago
        The non-WebKit version of Opera Mobile and the Android version of Chrome are both significantly better IMO.
        nkorth 13y ago
        I'm using Opera Mobile on Android 2.3 and it reflows text nicely. It has some other problems, but it's far better than the stock browser!
    - wahnfrieden 13y ago
      You have HN's use of tables to thank for this one.
- tocomment 13y ago
  By the way, I could never figure out how some sites disable zoom on the iphone? Anyone know? (I'd love to write a bookmarklet to re-enable zoom)
  - bjacobel 13y ago
    I'd have a look at the <meta viewport=""> tag.
  - bti 13y ago
    <meta name="viewport" content="initial-scale=1.0, user-scalable=no" /> or <meta name="viewport" content="initial-scale=1.0, maximum-scale=1.0 />
    - tocomment 13y ago
      Thanks! I found this bookmarlet someone already made [1] and I found a page to test it out on [2]. But it doesn't seem to do anything. Any ideas why it wouldn't be working? [1] https://gist.github.com/beastaugh/725354 https://gist.github.com/beastaugh/725354 [2] http://davidwalsh.name/demo/mobile-viewport.php http://davidwalsh.name/demo/mobile-viewport.php
      - tocomment 13y ago
        Alas, a bookmarklet to re-enable zooming on the iphone is born: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/17087750/how-to-re-enable-zoom-on-iphone-with-javascript-bookmarklet http://stackoverflow.com/questions/17087750/how-to-re-enable...
  - exodust 13y ago
    Modern smartphone browsers (at least on Android 4+ including the default browser), allow you to override the website's request to control zoom. As it should be. Denying users zoom on a web page with the viewport trick is stupid. Sorry, but it is. Websites shouldn't "pretend" to be native apps. GOOD native apps that don't respond to pinch and zoom will allow font size change anyway - such as the excellent Falcon Pro Twitter client. Lack of zoom doesn't matter because I can punch in the font size and all is well.
bad_user 13y ago
Oh, how much I hate websites that invite me to download their stupid app. And to add insult to injury, whenever I tried installing their stupid apps, it's usually just a glorified, broken and slow embedded browser. I also hate websites that give me a commercial that I have to skip to get to the actual content. The invitation for downloading their stupid app is just a use-case for such commercials. Google should penalize all websites that do this and I would love them for doing it.
- untog 13y ago
  You want Google to penalise web sites that push ads aggressively? Right.
  - moultano 13y ago
    http://searchengineland.com/too-many-ads-above-the-fold-now-penalized-by-googles-page-layout-algo-108613 http://searchengineland.com/too-many-ads-above-the-fold-now-... Google already does that.
  - drivebyacct2 13y ago
    I don't get this snark. Ads work because they provide some value to someone that causes them to click. If simply inundating someone with ads was enough to make "advertising" work, then Google wouldn't exist and we'd all be Don Drapers.
inportb 13y ago
A kinda-sorta related situation involves forum clients -- multiple different websites offer alerts pointing to the same app, and having to click through the same alert for each website could be somewhat annoying. I'm not sure if this could be detected, though. Perhaps I'm just tired of smackachat alerts.
- pyre 13y ago
  That's just a result of each forum opting in to using that as their 'native app.' It's annoying that it's the same app every time, but would it be better of all of these forums each had a completely different app they prompted you about?
mattmanser 13y ago
What? Google are dictating your technology solution here and penalising you if you don't do exactly what they want. This is bad news for consumers and web masters alike and they're dressing it up as if it's the developers fault when a separate site is a perfectly reasonable solution. That some sites are still struggling to deliver a good mobile solution is irrelevant and a red herring. It's not Google's job to dictate our solutions. Do you not remember their rubbish hashbang solution?
- DanBC 13y ago
  I am very critical of Google's algorithm and people's SEO, because of the huge influence that has had on the WWW. This is social engineering that I like. I hate people serving up weird broken content because they've detected a browser window size. But it's not even that. Google have discovered some sites return a useful hit, but when the mobile user clicks that link they are re-directed to a non-useful page. That makes Google results less useful for those users. Google is thus only asking you to make those hits as useful as they appear to be. That's perfectly acceptable. It's not different to down-grading people who stuff a bunch of keywords at the end of the page - those are not useful to anyone and thus Google doesn't give them high rating. If any Googler's (or DDGers or etc) are reading I'd love it if search engines gave me an option to search for "Valid HTML and valid CSS only".
- viraptor 13y ago
  "still struggling to deliver a good mobile solution" I think that would be irrelevant. But I don't agree that's what happens. They produce an alternative version of the site and additional code, that makes it worse than what they had to begin with. It makes the site a worse place to end up on from search, so it's ranking got nerfed. As much as I sometimes disagree with changes to google algorithms and their position, I think this change is both technically and socially correct. Everyone who didn't spend time and money making their website worse - wins.
- deleted 13y ago
  [deleted]
- kevin_p 13y ago
  I think you're missing the point. This isn't about penalising having a separate mobile and desktop site, or even automatically redirecting phone users to the mobile site. It's about penalising sites that automatically redirect all mobile visitors to the mobile version's homepage, even if they tried to visit a specific sub-page (eg an article on a news site, product on an e-commerce site etc) through Google search. Which already falls foul of Google's existing rules against serving completely different content to Googlebot and real visitors.
weinzierl 13y ago
I don't know if they penalize it but they recommend against it: App download interstitials Many webmasters promote their site's apps to their web visitors. There are many implementations to do this, some of which may cause indexing issues of smartphone- optimized content and others that may be too disruptive to the visitor's usage of the site. https://developers.google.com/webmasters/smartphone-sites/common-mistakes https://developers.google.com/webmasters/smartphone-sites/co...

by bru 13y ago

lostlogin 13y ago

If only they also down ranked site with total POS mobile sites. Extremely low res graphics, minimal information, massive text. I'm not blind. I'm not half brain dead. I'm just on a phone - your standard site is fine. Have a look at https://touch.trademe.co.nz/ https://touch.trademe.co.nz/

pyre 13y ago
Standard sites aren't always fine. For example, sites where the UI relies on mouse hovering.

InclinedPlane 13y ago

There's actually two relevant xkcd comics, here's the second: http://xkcd.com/1174/ http://xkcd.com/1174/

slacka 13y ago
I actually prefer the mobile versions that let you set font size on mobile. For example, when zoomed out in HN comments to a level where I don't need to scroll horizontally, the text is impossible to read on low DPI devices like my 3GS. HN would benefit from this. But I hate not being able to zoom. Perfect example, wikipedia. If sites offered a version like the iOS Safari reader gives you, they would be a plus. Unfortunately, most get it wrong.
- drivers99 13y ago
  Speaking of wikipedia, another annoying bug is that when I go to a non-mobile URL with an anchor tag, it gets stripped out when it redirects to the mobile version of that page, so you end up at the top of the article and not the section you wanted.
- jadyoyster 13y ago
  Good mobile browsers make sure every column of text gets reflowed to the width of your screen. Isn't this possible on iOS?
  - plorkyeran 13y ago
    No. Mobile Safari is not a very good mobile browser.
    - untog 13y ago
      If Mobile Safari is a bad mobile browser, what qualifies as a good one?
      - jlogsdon 13y ago
        I've been using Firefox Mobile on Android with great success.
      - plorkyeran 13y ago
        The non-WebKit version of Opera Mobile and the Android version of Chrome are both significantly better IMO.
      - nkorth 13y ago
        I'm using Opera Mobile on Android 2.3 and it reflows text nicely. It has some other problems, but it's far better than the stock browser!
  - wahnfrieden 13y ago
    You have HN's use of tables to thank for this one.
tocomment 13y ago
By the way, I could never figure out how some sites disable zoom on the iphone? Anyone know? (I'd love to write a bookmarklet to re-enable zoom)
- bjacobel 13y ago
  I'd have a look at the <meta viewport=""> tag.
- bti 13y ago
  <meta name="viewport" content="initial-scale=1.0, user-scalable=no" /> or <meta name="viewport" content="initial-scale=1.0, maximum-scale=1.0 />
  - tocomment 13y ago
    Thanks! I found this bookmarlet someone already made [1] and I found a page to test it out on [2]. But it doesn't seem to do anything. Any ideas why it wouldn't be working? [1] https://gist.github.com/beastaugh/725354 https://gist.github.com/beastaugh/725354 [2] http://davidwalsh.name/demo/mobile-viewport.php http://davidwalsh.name/demo/mobile-viewport.php
    - tocomment 13y ago
      Alas, a bookmarklet to re-enable zooming on the iphone is born: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/17087750/how-to-re-enable-zoom-on-iphone-with-javascript-bookmarklet http://stackoverflow.com/questions/17087750/how-to-re-enable...
- exodust 13y ago
  Modern smartphone browsers (at least on Android 4+ including the default browser), allow you to override the website's request to control zoom. As it should be. Denying users zoom on a web page with the viewport trick is stupid. Sorry, but it is. Websites shouldn't "pretend" to be native apps. GOOD native apps that don't respond to pinch and zoom will allow font size change anyway - such as the excellent Falcon Pro Twitter client. Lack of zoom doesn't matter because I can punch in the font size and all is well.

bad_user 13y ago

Oh, how much I hate websites that invite me to download their stupid app. And to add insult to injury, whenever I tried installing their stupid apps, it's usually just a glorified, broken and slow embedded browser. I also hate websites that give me a commercial that I have to skip to get to the actual content. The invitation for downloading their stupid app is just a use-case for such commercials. Google should penalize all websites that do this and I would love them for doing it.

untog 13y ago
You want Google to penalise web sites that push ads aggressively? Right.
- moultano 13y ago
  http://searchengineland.com/too-many-ads-above-the-fold-now-penalized-by-googles-page-layout-algo-108613 http://searchengineland.com/too-many-ads-above-the-fold-now-... Google already does that.
- drivebyacct2 13y ago
  I don't get this snark. Ads work because they provide some value to someone that causes them to click. If simply inundating someone with ads was enough to make "advertising" work, then Google wouldn't exist and we'd all be Don Drapers.

inportb 13y ago

A kinda-sorta related situation involves forum clients -- multiple different websites offer alerts pointing to the same app, and having to click through the same alert for each website could be somewhat annoying. I'm not sure if this could be detected, though. Perhaps I'm just tired of smackachat alerts.

pyre 13y ago
That's just a result of each forum opting in to using that as their 'native app.' It's annoying that it's the same app every time, but would it be better of all of these forums each had a completely different app they prompted you about?

mattmanser 13y ago

What? Google are dictating your technology solution here and penalising you if you don't do exactly what they want. This is bad news for consumers and web masters alike and they're dressing it up as if it's the developers fault when a separate site is a perfectly reasonable solution. That some sites are still struggling to deliver a good mobile solution is irrelevant and a red herring. It's not Google's job to dictate our solutions. Do you not remember their rubbish hashbang solution?

DanBC 13y ago
I am very critical of Google's algorithm and people's SEO, because of the huge influence that has had on the WWW. This is social engineering that I like. I hate people serving up weird broken content because they've detected a browser window size. But it's not even that. Google have discovered some sites return a useful hit, but when the mobile user clicks that link they are re-directed to a non-useful page. That makes Google results less useful for those users. Google is thus only asking you to make those hits as useful as they appear to be. That's perfectly acceptable. It's not different to down-grading people who stuff a bunch of keywords at the end of the page - those are not useful to anyone and thus Google doesn't give them high rating. If any Googler's (or DDGers or etc) are reading I'd love it if search engines gave me an option to search for "Valid HTML and valid CSS only".
viraptor 13y ago
"still struggling to deliver a good mobile solution" I think that would be irrelevant. But I don't agree that's what happens. They produce an alternative version of the site and additional code, that makes it worse than what they had to begin with. It makes the site a worse place to end up on from search, so it's ranking got nerfed. As much as I sometimes disagree with changes to google algorithms and their position, I think this change is both technically and socially correct. Everyone who didn't spend time and money making their website worse - wins.
deleted 13y ago
[deleted]
kevin_p 13y ago
I think you're missing the point. This isn't about penalising having a separate mobile and desktop site, or even automatically redirecting phone users to the mobile site. It's about penalising sites that automatically redirect all mobile visitors to the mobile version's homepage, even if they tried to visit a specific sub-page (eg an article on a news site, product on an e-commerce site etc) through Google search. Which already falls foul of Google's existing rules against serving completely different content to Googlebot and real visitors.

weinzierl 13y ago

I don't know if they penalize it but they recommend against it: App download interstitials Many webmasters promote their site's apps to their web visitors. There are many implementations to do this, some of which may cause indexing issues of smartphone- optimized content and others that may be too disruptive to the visitor's usage of the site. https://developers.google.com/webmasters/smartphone-sites/common-mistakes https://developers.google.com/webmasters/smartphone-sites/co...