Page not Mobile Friendly – Google Bots

Hello Kkrants,

I’m not sure what is going on with that tool, but it certainly is reading your page differently than I am seeing it.

It seems to me that it’s an error with the google tool and not your site.

I’ll send this thread to the theme developer to see if he has any insight for us.
(also, hello from Missoula!)

-Kevin

Thanks Kevin!

I appreciate the prompt feedback! Glad to hear I didn’t mess up the theme somehow! Let me know if you hear anything new. Maybe I will post on google’s help forum too.

Hope it’s warm in Missoula! We’re headed there for Christmas! ??

-Kara

Hi Kara,
When I view your site in mobile I’m seeing something totally different from what the google mobile friendly test is outputting. Are you using a plugin that could be changing the mobile output?

Hannah

Good morning Hannah,

I do not think we are using any plugins that would affect our mobile site only. I did activate Jetpack’s mobile friendly site once to try it, but it completely changes the theme in order to make the site “mobile friendly.” That is no longer active, and I had only activated it to attempt to solve this issue.

Active plugins are: Akismet, Buttons Shortcode And Widgets, Collapse-O-Matic, Google Analytics Dashboard for WP, Jetpack by WordPress.com, Kadence Toolkit (for the theme customization), Redirection, Robo Maps, Simple Facebook Plugin, WordPress Database Backup, WP Add Custom CSS, WP Editor, and Yoast SEO. I tried not to make it too complicated, as I am a pretty basic user.

Kadence Toolkit does have an option to use a different slider set than the desktop version, which I do have activated, but I was under the impression that was to improve mobile usability. When I did not have it activated, some of our slides were visibly cut off by the screen size.

Thanks,
Kara

Hmm, makes me wonder if google is testing a cached version. Have you cleared all your caches?

Hannah

I’ve cleared the caches and histories on my browsers. This may be a silly questions, but it there somewhere else I should attempt to clear them? Something through our host or FTP that would affect the site?

I’ve been trying to keep everything updated and as clean as I can, but like I said, pretty basic knowledge level! I appreciate any help!

Thanks,
Kara ??

It could be your internal cache. You can try out a caching plugin like WP Rocket (premium) or W3 Total Cache (free). If that doesn’t work the developer may have more insight. He is currently traveling but I’ll make sure he looks into this.

Hannah

Well, I thought maybe we were on to something!

I installed W3 Total Cache, and found that our website was running an old PHP version that was no longer supported even by our hosting site. I couldn’t even run W3 without a “fatal error”.

I’ve updated our PHP to allow W3 to run, then cleared all the caches, but it still reads as “not-mobile friendly”. ?? At least I’ve found something to help our website run faster!

This is not a super time sensitive matter, as I know the site looks just fine on a mobile device, but I am so curious as to why the google site can’t read it properly. I love the theme, and I won’t be changing anytime soon.

Thanks,
Kara

Hey, I took a look at your site and found your issue. Has to do with one of your plugins blocking robots and thus your blocking googles search bot. This seems to be coming from a plugin that may have to do with captcha.

See here: https://search.google.com/search-console/mobile-friendly

Type in your url. Then you should get this screen:

That screen shows that google is being blocking from Scanning your page.

I hope that helps,

Kadence Themes

That screen shows up no matter what webpage you type in.

The reCAPCHA is for the mobile friendly test site itself to make sure that it’s real people scanning the pages. When I type in our competitors site, the reCAPCHA still shows up. Once you complete the steps for the reCAPCHA, their page registers as mobile friendly; our does not.

All of my plugins are listed above, and none contain a reCAPCHA feature.

Do you have any other suggestions?

Thanks,
Kara

This may be a bit time consuming, but I would suggest going through all of your plugins and deactivating one by one, running it through the google tool after each is deactive. Also remember to clear your cache after each time.

It’s possible that the plugin they are using reacts differently than yours.

This will be the best method of determining if you have a plugin that is causing this conflict.

-Kevin

Well, it took a while, but I did find the solution:

It looks like before I took over the site, someone had accessed our .htaccess file in the admin files. They had placed some hidden re-directs which started to go to nowhere once I had changed the theme and began updating the site. Once I removed their chunk of code with a clean .htaccess file, and placed the correct security on our files, everything clean itself up!

Thank you all for all your help! The theme is still amazing!

Great! I’m glad you got it figured out.

-Kevin