Googlebot isn't recognizing responsive site

We are seeing the same issue prompted by the same reason. We are hosting with WP Engine. Clearing the cache and then running the Google test shows we are mobile friendly. Check on it later and the test fails again. I think the system is caching desktop version and serves that up to Google which is looking for mobile and it fails.

YES! Please help us!

@webcitymedia – so You cleared Your site cache, ran the test, and it worked?! I lost You on the caching part. You think Google is caching the desktop version?

One idea I emailed the ATMS developer about (and haven’t heard a response) was the possibility of detecting for the Googlebot user agent in the plugin itself. The plugin is set up to detect other user agents. Why not just add that one to the list? I’m no wordpress expert, but if I don’t get help soon I may just try to do that on my own. I just can’t believe there aren’t masses of clients out there that are having this exact same issue.

More background: I inherited a non responsive theme with my client. Before my client moved to WP Engine I used the W3T caching plugin which allowed me to tweak it to avoid caching and delivering desktop pages to mobile users while using AMTS. When the client moved to WP Engine where they have their own server based caching we could not use the W3T plugin and were not aware of the mobile switch failure until now. WP Engine plans on working to accommodate using WP Touch plugin. Since there is not timeline on implementation we are forced to migrate the customer theme to a responsive theme structure. Best approach in the long term. Less plugins is king.

The masses may not know they have a problem until April 21st when their ranking drops.

Thanks for the info. We are also using WP Engine and are aware of their restrictions on caching plugins. I will check out the WP Touch plugin. Redoing our entire site to be fully responsive would be quite an undertaking!

Tell me about it. I am answering this message to take a break from that undertaking. It is based on this answer from WP Engine 3/28/2015.

My question: Will WP Touch work today with Google Mobile test on the WP Engine platform??

WP-Engine answer: Currently, no. This is still something we are working to deploy farm wide. As of right now I do not have an ETA on it.

haha, ugh! I was actually about to put in a support ticket to WP Engine. Good to know about WP Touch. So are You going to expand ATMS to include desktop resolution as well or are You going to recode the whole site to scale without a plugin at all? Thanks for communicating

Not using ATMS but migrating content to a new responsive theme structure. Simplicity without extra plugins is important these days with everything getting complicated, especially when troubleshooting issues. Just got to be critically savvy with css and conditional php.

I see. So WP Engine said that WP Touch would not yet pass the test. What about AMTS? Did You ask them about that or is it the same technology as WP Touch? I’m not familiar with WP Touch.

They indicated only WP Touch which appears to have over 400,000+ installs in plugin repository versus 20,000+ for ATMS. Seems smart on their part to keep it simple and go with the more popular plugin.

FYI, i just inquired and got a response back from WP Engine. They said:

“Thanks for getting in touch with us. This is actually a bug we recently documented, and as a result our development team is currently working on identifying a server-wide solution for this issue. That being said, I’ve gone ahead and applied a temporary fix to get this working on our side of things. If you run the test once more, the mobile-friendly tester should see the mobile version of your site.”

This information might be good enough for us to let things ride for awhile. Thanks a lot for Your help!

FYI, i just inquired and got a response back from WP Engine. They said:

“Thanks for getting in touch with us. This is actually a bug we recently documented, and as a result our development team is currently working on identifying a server-wide solution for this issue. That being said, I’ve gone ahead and applied a temporary fix to get this working on our side of things. If you run the test once more, the mobile-friendly tester should see the mobile version of your site.”

This information might be good enough for us to let things ride for awhile. Thanks a lot for Your help!

Interesting. I need to question them on this as I just ran the test on the site and it still not mobile friendly.

Thanks for the heads up. You shared experience provided a pain free solution. I forwarded your WP Engine response back into our ticket and voila we get the same fix. BTW – The fixes are implemented on an individual web site basis at this moment. Cheers!

had the same problem with the ATMS plugin using WP-ENGINE hosting and told them and they applied a ‘fix’ and it works fine.. Here is what they said:

So when we first encountered this issue, we added a rule for “Googlebot” on the server, which targeted Google specifically…then we realized that method depends on how the mobile site is coded, but targeting just “Google” was much more reliable.

These rules were for a specific plugin called “WP-Touch” and this rule relied on the detection of Google’s mobile bot.

The rule I wrote targets the actual user agent…so if it’s a mobile device, it will be seen by Google as mobile, which is a more efficient way of fixing this issue and works regardless of how the site is coded.

What we do is add the rule to the server and the rule gets processed before the site loads, so this is not a temporary fix…this is definitely a complete fix for you moving forward.