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We have our normal website - http://www.example.com. We now also have a mobile site - http://m.example.com. If a "mobile" user visits my site, we have JavaScript that detects it and auto forwards them over to the mobile site as well, for proper user experience.

When I use Google's "Am I mobile friendly" tools, my site doesn't show up as mobile friendly, since it's checking the original site, rather than what is redirected.

How do I "tell" Google, or assure myself that Google is aware of our mobile presence (since not having a mobile presence can affect SEO)?

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    Seems like using JavaScript to trigger a mobile switch would be a major speed/performance hit, as well as not too reliable/compatible in regards to automated tools/bots/scans. Are you able to migrate the trigger to server side pre-process instead?
    – dhaupin
    Commented Apr 17, 2015 at 23:24
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    And to confirm Google sees the mobile: find your site in a serp using a mobile phone. It will show a grey "mobile friendly" tag in the description. Might take a few days to aappear.
    – dhaupin
    Commented Apr 17, 2015 at 23:30
  • Thanks @dhaupin I never gave any thought to redirecting at the server side, but that would definately be a preferred option. I'll research some more..
    – ewitkows
    Commented Apr 20, 2015 at 13:08

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This is what Google calls the "separate URLs" configuration.

In the desktop site, you should add a special <link rel="alternate" ...> tag pointing to the corresponding mobile URL. This helps Googlebot discover the location of your site's mobile pages.

In the mobile site, you should add a <link rel="canonical" ...> tag pointing to the corresponding desktop URL.

You can put the links either in the HTML of the pages or in your sitemaps.

More details and explanation here.

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    As a note, those meta directives should happen with server side logic, don't use JS conditionals to render them into Dom via the existing JS mobile switch
    – dhaupin
    Commented Apr 17, 2015 at 23:28
  • Thanks! Will add this today and let you know if I have any issues, much appreciated
    – ewitkows
    Commented Apr 20, 2015 at 13:07

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