Autotrader Presentation – April 2015

Google Analytics & Google Webmaster Tools

Huge Google Update Coming April 21st

Per Google: “Starting April 21, we Google will be expanding our use of mobile-friendliness as a ranking signal. This change will affect mobile searches in all languages worldwide and will have a significant impact in our search results.”

Follow these steps in order to see if your dealership website will be affected.

We’ll be following the info in this article: What Dealerships Need To Know

First Step: Test your dealer website with the Google Mobile Friendly Website Checker

More than likely your test will pass and display something like this:

test

But that isn’t the whole story. Next…

Now we have to see if there are any errors or in this case, how many errors are happening in the background.

You will need access to your website’s Google Webmaster Tools.

Before we start, log into to Webmaster Tools and select your website.

In Google Webmaster Tools on the left click > Search Traffic > Mobile Usability (or click here and select your site)

So even though the website above passed the “Mobile Check” you can see there’s a mess of errors going on. Not good.

mobile-usability

Next, Google Webmaster Tools on the left click > Google Index > Blocked Resources (or click here and select your site)

blocked-resources

Last we’ll check the “Fetch as Google”.

Google Webmaster Tools on the left click > Crawl > Fetch as Google (or click here and select your site)

Important: Leave the url field empty, click Fetch and Render one time for “Desktop” and one time for “Mobile”.

So in total you’ll run the test two times. Each test takes about 60 seconds to complete.

fetch

Results and what they mean. First the results:

result

#1 Mobile Smartphone Results

Redirected usually means the website is using a stand-alone app rather than responsive mobile code to display the website on a mobile device.

Say what?

Here’s an easy way to know: Look at the website on a desktop computer > then on a mobile phone. They won’t look the same and the mobile version looks more like an app you’d download rather than a regular website.

This is not the Google “Preferred” way and here’s why:

The url structures of the desktop version and mobile version aren’t the same.
While on your desktop site, email yourself a link to a few pages like an SRP page and a few off pages like About Us, then go to your mobile phone and click on them. I haven’t tested this lately but just a few months ago doing that would take me to a 404 dead page on my mobile phone for many dealer websites that utilized this mobile strategy.
It may not happen on all redirected mobile version websites, but many it does happen and Google knows this.
This is also what’s causing a lot of the issues in the “Mobile Usability” and “Blocked Resources” in the sections above.

# 2 Desktop Results

“Partial” means Google was blocked from accessing resources on the website. To see what was blocked, click on the word “Desktop” and you’ll see.

Notice how the word “Blocked Resources” has been a common error notice throughout these tests? Read on…

WTH are “Blocked Resources” and why doesn’t my dealer website company fix these issues?

I’ll try to answer best I can but there are many reasons and some may be intentional by the website company to help keep the website secure.

Why “Blocked Resource” errors occur:

Short Answer: Google wants access to every piece of code the website generates. When access to these resources is denied, it tells you in Webmaster tools in the form of an error.

Technical answer: Google wants access every Stylesheet (.css), Javascript (.js) that sits in every directory and plugin folder the website uses to make it work. This access is controlled by the .htaccess file the website company creates and the code in that file controls what bots can access and many times they control that access on a per bot basis.

Hey, you asked so I answered 🙂

The real answer: Only your dealer website provider knows and it would be best to ask them. More than likely they’ll tell you its for security reasons, whether that’s true or accurate only they know because every website platform is setup differently.