GSC sees mobile usability issues, when there should be none

[PaulEchere]

Hello,

Yesterday I noticed that GSC sees a number of mobile usability issues with my website, while when I check each individual page - it says there are none.
For example: https://search.google.com/test/mobil...JiLjg&hl=en_GB
This tool sees no issues, but GSC failed to validate a fix saying there is an issue.

Did anyone have any kind of similar troubles lately?

[baldidiot]

Yeah it happens and can be a bit annoying. My guess is that it's when google hasn't loaded a css file or something.

[insiderjoe]

I have noticed an increase in such errors lately even though the site is working perfectly. My guess is this tool has some issues after some updates.

[Mattbar]

Yeah I think it is an issue with the tool, I've seen similar issues. Eventually google seems to work it out but definitely chucking out more incorrect errors of late.

[eenzoo]

Yeah, get that frequently. Usually i report it as fixed and get a confirmation couple of days later.
And even its nonsense, I would always respond in that way.

[bpmee]

One possibility: Customers visiting from another country with slower internet connections or at a greater geographical distance.

For example, my server is in the USA. A couple regulars from the bottom of South America (Argentina) visit each day. Those particular pages tend to get lower PageSpeed and usability scores compared to the ones I see testing from the United States myself.

I suspect, rather I hope, Google drops those visitors, especially if they're not the target market.

Finally, I too see the scores correct themselves after a while. Very frustrating in the meantime as I hate to delay any repairs over false positives.

[wonderpunter]

usually its' because the report in GSC is based on real time devices and the mobility and pagespeed reports are lab tools, which means you can have 100 page speed on all devices yet still have your gsc score with 50%+ slow urls or mobile compatibility i would try testing using chrome developer tools and chack out the times in the network tab.

[PaulEchere]

Yeah, the fact that my target audience is from Nigeria, where internet speed is not at its best probably doesn't make it any better either.

usually its' because the report in GSC is based on real time devices and the mobility and pagespeed reports are lab tools, which means you can have 100 page speed on all devices yet still have your gsc score with 50%+ slow urls or mobile compatibility i would try testing using chrome developer tools and chack out the times in the network tab.

[wonderpunter]

have you tried running AMP? that would defiantely improve your speed modify a little so your CTA work, in your case its a case of visuals or ranking.

Yeah, the fact that my target audience is from Nigeria, where internet speed is not at its best probably doesn't make it any better either.

[universal4]

This has been an ongoing issue in GSC for a while.

Many more are reporting false positives lately, and in some cases some of the reports might lead to finding issues that were only real in very few circumstances.

I recently dug in to this a little and in one case I had a site that only had a minor issues on devices under 375 wide. I had had a small section in my footer with some clickable images that at those lower widths were clearly too close together.

One thing that helped me determine where the issue was, I set up chrome canary so I could change the user agent (googlebot smartphone), and disable cookies etc, added the iPhone 5/SE (320x568 ). The reason I set up canary was so I did not have to keep changing user agent in the browsers I normally use regularly.

In my case the technique helped my find what I needed to change, but it may not be for everyone.

I admit I am still seeing an occasional mobile error but normally the pages that had previously failed will validate in the next run. I have a suspicion that sometimes it just takes a few validation runs, possibly due to them not flushing their caches out completely. (speculation but if this was not the case why are so many able to just re-validate and pass next time around)

Rick
Universal4

/side note If anyone wants to go through the hassle of setting up canary, follow his guide. The reason to use either canary or a browser you do not use for regular work is that canaray is the only version of straight chrome that will run along side chrome in a separate space with different updates and it makes it easier not having to change all the settings each time for a few small tests.
https://gentofsearch.com/blog/chrome...bot-simulator/

[topcanadiancasinos81]

Sometimes this happens when you use js-based dynamic chats. That is, in fact, the mobile version of the site is valid, but the Google bot receives a different version of the page distorted by the chat window.

[universal4]

Except in a high amount of cases of false positives the sites are not using chats of any kind.

The frequency of these reports and those experiencing them when they are not warranted seems to be increasing. Although, often, it is difficult to find some of the complaints, since keywords such as "gsc wrong" or "gsc incorrect" seem to only rank such pages as the google help pages where they talk about how helpful google is in finding errors they refuse to show you what the real problem is.

Also seems like the screen shot of supposed errors rarely show in the gsc.

The most common suggestion of why these errors are suddenly showing up is that the googlebot smartphone does not properly load the css file(s) that makes the site mobile friendly. Seems like even though they re-enabled this in August, it still seems to have some issues.

Rick
Universal4

[PaulEchere]

60% of all my pages showed up as unusable on mobile (when I started the thread). This never happened to me before to this extent.
It eventually took me 6 or 7 validations to get rid of this. Every validation confirmed the fix from 10-15 pages and every time I ran it again it confirmed more and more pages were "fixed".

[universal4]

Glad to here you made some progress Paul.

Seems like validation takes ages occasionally and sometimes is quick.

Rick
Universal4

[universal4]

This is still happening.
https://mytechguy.co.nz/blog/mobile-...sues-detected/ (see the comments)

And sometimes they refuse to allow a re-validation attempt because they determined 1 page in a small bunch doesn't pass the live test then they fail to start a re-validation.

Rick
Universal4

[PaulEchere]

I actually have the same thing, 4 pages didn't pass validation after ~10 attempts and I can't re-do it now. But luckily, I don't care about those 4 pages.

This is still happening.
https://mytechguy.co.nz/blog/mobile-...sues-detected/ (see the comments)

And sometimes they refuse to allow a re-validation attempt because they determined 1 page in a small bunch doesn't pass the live test then they fail to start a re-validation.

Rick
Universal4

[casinoscanadabest]

I have noticed that the search console often fails, and support does not have time to fix them. Various errors appear, which the bot saw, but in fact they do not exist. It is very interesting whether such non-existent errors affect the promotion of the site. On the one hand, we are doing everything possible to optimize the site for both users and bots, but on the other hand google gives different errors that do not exist. This is just a mystery!

[dannyx]

At my place 2 errors pop up all the time on mobile devices.
-too small font
-clickable elements too close together

I have been doing a lot to correct this for the past month - two but it keeps popping up.
The font is nowhere small, the smallest font I have is 16.
The clickable elements are reasonably separated, on some pages I've given up on them altogether, but the errors are still there.

In the last few days again 50% of the page qualified under these 2 errors.

[PaulEchere]

Was the same with me when I initially started the thread, the issue was not actually present, but GSC claimed it was - relentlessly re-validating fixes did help eventually.

At my place 2 errors pop up all the time on mobile devices.
-too small font
-clickable elements too close together

I have been doing a lot to correct this for the past month - two but it keeps popping up.
The font is nowhere small, the smallest font I have is 16.
The clickable elements are reasonably separated, on some pages I've given up on them altogether, but the errors are still there.

In the last few days again 50% of the page qualified under these 2 errors.

[dannyx]

That's what I'm doing, at first I made corrections but I don't know what to correct anymore myself.
Glad to hear that it worked for you. Although I've done it this way a few times already, I'll continue to verify every now and then, maybe the problem will eventually end.
I think about 10-15 times in a month of two I tried to re-verify/index and so far the number of pages useless on mobile devices is growing. (Realistically the site is fully tuned for mobile devices and responsive, graphics, everything).
So much is good that I am rather uninterested in mobile users. however, I don't know if this also affects the overall ranking.