My website has two domains: one for desktop, which is abc.com (for example), and another for mobile, which is m.abc.com. After shifting the mobile site to a new design, the canonical tag on the mobile version was mistakenly set to m.abc.com by my tech team. When I noticed this after the weekend, I asked them to change the canonical tag on the mobile site to abc.com because I want the desktop URLs to be the preferred version. They made the change, but now the issue is that despite this, the m.abc.com pages are still ranking on desktop. Even after updating the canonical tag, the mobile pages are continuing to rank in desktop search results. How can I fix this, and what should I do next?
Wrong URLs Ranking on Google
- Thread starter iliyana55
- Start date
joanaansar
Junior Member
- Sep 13, 2024
- 100
- 16
You can try submitting a URL removal request for m.abc.com and resubmitting a sitemap with only the desktop version.
- Aug 9, 2017
- 5,574
- 6,859
Google's crawler priorities mobile versions of sites, and if that is the version of the site that is being served to Googlebot, that is the one that it ranks. When did you make the update to the canonical tags? It can take up to several weeks for new canonical tags to be evaluated. You can try requesting indexing of your homepage via GSC to get it kick started.
how do i do submit url removal request as I haven't created a property for m.abc.com , I mean I don't have the mobile URL added in search console
it was done last friday. Also, even in case of new articles also, their m. URLs are ranking on desktop instead of non "m" url
- Jan 23, 2024
- 408
- 69
submit a new sitemap for the desktop version to Google Search Console. You can also request URL removals for the mobile pages if they keep showing up.
It might take a bit for Google to reflect the changes
It might take a bit for Google to reflect the changes
- Oct 20, 2013
- 9,720
- 1,625
I think it's a cache issue and it will take some time to recrawl your site. You need to wait for it. As advised you can submit the updated sitemap in the search console and also make sure that the canonical tag has been properly changed to the desktop version.
embossitworld
Elite Member
- Jul 16, 2013
- 1,516
- 150
To fix the issue of your mobile site ranking on desktop search results, first ensure that the canonical tag on your mobile pages is correctly set to point to the desktop version (abc.com). Next, check if the mobile pages are still indexed by search engines. You can do this by using Google Search Console to inspect the URLs and request a re-crawl of the desktop version. Also, consider adding a 301 redirect from the mobile version to the desktop version, so that users and search engines are directed to the preferred site. Finally, monitor the rankings and index status over the next few weeks to see if the changes take effect.
- Oct 29, 2021
- 8,355
- 3,589
Ensure the canonical tags are correctly set to abc.com on the mobile site, update your sitemap, use 301 redirects from m.abc.com to abc.com where necessary, and request indexing in Google Search Console to speed up the changes
hideath
Elite Member
- Jun 16, 2019
- 6,620
- 7,370
That's a bad idea, pages need to be recrawled so the problem get fixed, don't mess things up more
Just be patient, give it a few days-weeks, whatever it takes,
You can speed up the process by submitting the main pages urls to be fetched in GSC