How to Fix Google Search Console and Mobile Usability Issues in Squarespace
Every few weeks I find this gem waiting in my inbox from the Google Search Console Team saying there are Mobile Usability issues detected on my website. Typically the errors I receive are:
Text too small to read
Content wider than screen
Clickable elements too close together
Then there’s a recommendation to fix those issues with a big blue button that says “Fix Mobile Usability Issues.”
So, what should you do if you get one of these emails? Take a note from the immortal phrase coined by Douglas Adams in The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy and Don’t Panic. You won’t even need a towel.
1. Click the Fix Mobile Usability Issues button in the email.
You’ll log into Google Search Console and see an ugly red graph of the errors.
2. Roll over an Error detailed in the list and click it.
This will let you see which page(s) are causing issues. Click the gray Validate Fix button.
3. Repeat the process for each error.
I have three errors, so I’ll click Validate Fix for each one. Google Search Console will run a quick initial validation and then let you move forward.
You’ll get an email from Google to let you know that they have begun validating the fix, then when each validation is complete you’ll get another email with an update. So many emails! Feel the love.
But why did I get this error?
What’s wrong with your website? Probably not much (at least from the mobile usability perspective), which is why we didn’t actually fix anything here. There are a couple of theories on why this error occurs. My friend Emily of Apiary Studio reached out to Squarespace Support about this and here’s what they had to say:
Regarding mobile usability errors, Google has a suite of tools within Google Search Console that examines a site's [base] code to provide suggestions and best practices for speeding up a site or increasing its mobile-friendliness, among other things. These tools are useful when coding your own site, but can present misleading results for sites built on a CMS platform, like Squarespace.
I’ve also heard that these errors can happen if the page hasn’t fully rendered before Google finishes its crawl of the website. At any rate, it’s a common enough occurrence and not something to be overly concerned with. You can just validate the fix and move on.
What if I got a different error?
Another common email I see from GSC for Squarespace websites is “Coverage issues detected: Indexed, though blocked by robots.txt.” This one is particularly frustrating because it happens when a page is available for indexing but there is a rule in Squarespace that says not to crawl it. There’s nothing to be done about it, so you can simply ignore these emails. You can learn more about this in Squarespace’s help document on Understanding Google SEO emails and console errors and if you are super bored you can see the full robots.txt document.
If you’re seeing an error that I haven’t mentioned here, reach out to Squarespace Support for a hand. They are your best option for support with these types of questions as they have the most updated information.
