If you have ever submitted your website to Google via Google’s Webmaster Tools, you may receive a message letting you know that your new web design has ‘New Mobile Usability issues detected for site [websitename.com.au]’.
Is this something to worry about?
The answer is yes and no. In most instances I have found that Google’s mobile-friendly test can generate false positives. That said, if something can be fixed, it’s best to fix it!
Recently I received a notice for a clients site letting me know that:
- Clickable elements too close together.
- Content wider than screen.
Mobile-Friendly Test
So I ran a check against the site URL using the Mobile-Friendly Test website: https://search.google.com/test/mobile-friendly
The results did not generate any of the initial warnings I received in my initial email which is a little odd. In fact the site is display as mobile friendly. This is what I mean about creating false positives.
They did however let me know about some Page Loading Issues which I checked.
- When I checked these issues, three of them are generated by Google’s own map API. So there’s nothing I can do about this.
- Another issue is related to my Instagram icon SVG file but the image is loading on the site, so that’s okay.
- The third issue relates to Javascript resources that couldn’t be loaded on the site. This was happening because I am using the Asset CleanUp: Page Speed Booster plugin. This plugin restricts JS and CSS loading to only include the required JS & CSS for each page in question. It’s very good and I highly recommend it. For more information on this see this post on Divi page speed optimisation.
So, in reality, the website has no mobile usability issues and is working as expected.
To understand more on checking mobile usability issues watch this YouTube video.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lhDo0oWqpU4