How Does Your Responsive Site Actually Look? Check Out This Cool Tool
It’s one thing to see how Google views your mobile site. But nothing beats actually seeing your site on different devices. So if you use responsive design on your site, I recommend checking out this free tool. It’ll show you how your site looks on iPhones, tablets and more: As it turns out, I look just as handsome on a phone as I do on a tablet. I love this tool!
Use The Mobile Version of “Fetch as Google”
Like most people, I’m a visual learner. Sure, it’s nice to see a laundry list of potential Mobile optimization issues. But personally, it’s much more helpful to actually SEE how Google sees my page. That’s why I recommend spot testing a few pages on your site using the Google Search Console’s “Fetch as Google” feature. Just enter a URL of a popular page from your site into it:
(Make sure to choose “Mobile” from the dropdown box)
And they’ll show you exactly what the Googlebot saw. You can even scroll down to see if Google missed anything (like images, videos, menus etc.).
Let Mobile Users See It All
Back in the day, people would block certain resources from mobile users.
(For example, they might hide some content…or block javascript from loading)
These people weren’t doing anything shady. Blocking these resources helped their page load faster on mobile devices. And it sometimes improved the mobile experience. With Mobile-first, Google considers your page’s mobile version the “main” version. And if your content is hidden to mobile users, they may not index or crawl that content. Or they may weigh it differently.
In the meantime, here’s my take:
If you block or hide content from mobile users, Google will ignore that content or put less weight on it.
Bottom line? Use your site on a few different phones. If desktop users see something mobile users don’t, I recommend getting that fixed ASAP.