The Faulty redirecterror appears in the URL Errorssection of the Crawl > Crawl Errorspage under the Smartphonestab.
Some websites use separate URLs to serve desktop and smartphone users and configure desktop pages to direct smartphone users to the mobile site (e.g. m.example.com). A faulty redirect occurs when a desktop page incorrectly redirects smartphone users to a smartphone page not relevant to their query. A typical example of this occurs when all desktop pages redirect smartphone users to the homepage of the smartphone-optimized site. In the figure below, the redirects shown with red arrows indicate faulty redirects:
This kind of redirect disrupts users' workflow and can cause them to stop using the site and look elsewhere.
Following are some tips to help you create a mobile-friendly search experience and avoid faulty redirects:
- Do a few searches on your own phone (or set your browser to act like a smartphone ) to see how your site behaves.
- Use the example URLs provided in the report as a starting point to debug exactly where the problem is with your server configuration.
- Set up your server so that it redirects smartphone users to the equivalent URL on your smartphone site.
- If a page on your site doesn’t have a smartphone equivalent, keep users on the desktop page, rather than redirecting them to the smartphone site’s homepage. Doing nothing is better than doing something wrong in this case.
- Consider using responsive web design , which serves the same content for desktop and smartphone users.
- Finally, read our recommendations for having separate URLs for desktop and smartphone users.
