Google, Websites

How to see what the mobile usability issues detected for site are in Google Search Console

Mobile Usability Issues

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[Video Transcript]

Google Search Console Email Alert – Mobile Usability Issue detect for site

Hi everyone. Thanks for joining me.

So I received this email that said I had a new mobile usability issue detected for my website. So you can see here, this came from Google Search Console, three mobile usability issues, and here are my top issues, clickable elements too close together, content wider than screen, text, too small to read. Okay. So what does that mean? So I’m going to click on this fix mobile usability issues button. And that takes me right here into my Google search console account, where I can actually see again, these same errors being identified for me.

Text too small to read

So I’m going to click on this first one text too small to read. And here’s the URL that it’s identifying for me as the place where the issue exists. So I’m going to click on this little arrow over here, and this opens up my website and I can see the page that they’re saying the text is too small to read.

Now you can see right here, the text is just fine on a laptop. However, if I right click, scroll down and click inspect, now I can look at the issue on a mobile device. So a small mobile media, mobile, or a large mobile device and the inspect element in Chrome. Now, when I do that, it’s easy to see. Okay. Yep. I have an issue here on my page. The text is definitely too small to read on that page. So I have some issue probably because of the YouTube video, where it’s squishing all of my content into this little tiny left hand side. And the text is really difficult to read. So that’s where the issue is not the way to fix that is to have a web developer a fix the way that this YouTube video is embedded. It’s screwing up the actual container of my website and it is squishing everything.

Clickable elements too close together

So I needed a developer to fix the YouTube video embed here. But you can see I’ve identified. Okay. Yep. I see what they’re talking about. That text is too small, so let’s go back and see what the other mobile usability issues are. I checked, so clickable elements too close together.

So again, it’s going to show me the URL where this issue exists and open it up. It looks like it’s that same page. So no surprise. Right? We have an issue with the embedded YouTube videos. So if I click on this and I scroll in, okay, I can see. Yep. I like if I click on this. Yep. Those are really small. You know, again, I’m on my computer with my mouse, but these, these are all clickable elements. They’re really close together. Especially here. You can see that’s way too difficult to click on.

You know, these are probably fine, not what it’s referring to as much as trying to click on these little links, you know, especially if you’re on a medium or even small sized smartphone, that’s, that’s nearly impossible. So those clickable links are too close together. Again for me in this scenario, it’s going to be resolved with this YouTube video. You could have any number of, of issues causing it on your site. You could just be spacing. It could be the padding in between the elements you need be spread out, but this is the way that you can see exactly what Google’s talking about.

Content wider than screen

So for the last one, just go content wider than screen. I think I have a guess at what this is. So again, it’s showing me that same URL. I open it up and again, it’s a mobile issue.

So I’m going to inspect and look at it on mobile. Here is the content that’s too wide, right? And it’s screwing everything up on the mobile device because there’s some issue with my YouTube video.

Contact your web developer to help you fix issues

So if you’re a developer yourself, you already know how to fix this. You know, there’s some issue with the width as described for this, you might need immediate query to change, you know, how it displays on mobile. If you’re not a web developer this is a situation where you, you work with whatever freelance web developer you’re working with or whomever you work with to help with your site and show them this issue and ask them to fix medium, bad, but you can share this with them. This is the way you can see for yourself what the actual issue is, if there’s any confusion. And then you, you would go about fixing these mobile usability issues. At least the ones that I’m experiencing by having a web developer and work on troubleshooting the page and recoding the page. So hope that helps you understand what that email meant from Google and how to see a little bit more detail about it. A wish everyone, a great rest of the day. Thanks for joining me.

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1 Comment

  1. I had the same e-mail and issue and came here thinking your article might help me. It didn’t unfortunately. I know that Google previously scanned the ‘offending’ page without detecting any problems. Without having made any changes to the website, they now suddenly find the same shortcomings you had received. That means their automated detection isn’t all that accurate.
    On another point, I thought I’d comment on (no offence intended) the overuse of the word “So” in your article, since almost every sentence – 20 of them – begins with this unneccessary word. It makes your message harder to read, in my opinion.