My website has disappeared from google search on cell phones. It appears top on the desktop for its key words. Can anyone help?

Dani AI

Generated

A few practical checks that build on and : differences between desktop and mobile results usually come from how Googlebot (smartphone) sees the page, not from "Apple tinkering." Start by ruling out personalization/geolocation (use private/incognito on both devices and put the phone on the same Wi‑Fi). Then run the diagnostics below.

  • Inspect problem URLs with Search Console’s URL Inspection and run the Live Test as Googlebot smartphone to see the rendered HTML, screenshots, and any resource errors.
  • Run the Mobile-Friendly Test for quick layout/usability flags.
  • If you use dynamic serving, confirm you return a proper Vary header (Vary: User-Agent) and that mobile/desktop versions aren’t blocking CSS/JS needed to render content.
  • Check for mobile-only problems: redirects, accidental noindex in mobile templates, incorrect rel=canonical/rel=alternate between desktop and mobile, or heavy JS that fails for smartphone crawlers.
  • If pages render correctly but rankings differ, compare content parity and Core Web Vitals on mobile; request reindexing from the URL Inspection tool after fixes.

A quick fix to confirm responsive basics:

<meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width,initial-scale=1">

If those steps look clean but the issue persists, capture one URL’s Live Test output and a pair of SERP screenshots (desktop vs mobile incognito) before posting them for deeper review.

Recommended Answers

All 5 Replies

My buddy has an iPhone. Seems Apple may be tinkering here?

commented: What does that have to do with Google? -8

Are all pages of your site mobile friendly? When using Google Search Console, what is your site's Mobile Page Experience, Core Web Vitals, and Mobile Usability scores? Google may not be ranking you well on mobile because they feel your site has a poor mobile experience.

My buddy is telling me his search results change from PC with Chrome to iOS and Safari. Safari is an Apple thing so filtering can happen.

Why should the results be the same?

Provide a link to your website. We'll see, maybe we can help you.

My buddy is telling me his search results change from PC with Chrome to iOS and Safari. Safari is an Apple thing so filtering can happen.

This can happen because he may be logged into his Google account on one device but not another. Google results are personalized, so if you’re logged in, their skewed based on your personal search history. Are cookies cleared across both devices?

Another reason this can happen is because results take geolocation into consideration. His iOS device may be using his mobile data plan, which resolves to a different IP (and slightly different location) than his home computer. For example, when I was living in NYC, my cable modem IP resolved to somewhere in Jersey, but if course my cell was much more accurate at pinpointing my location based on cell towers. If I were to do a Google search, for example, for “hotels”, I would get a different set of results depending upon where I am querying from. It would default to showing hotels near my current location, or at least what it thought my current location was.

Regardless, if a website has been delisted on mobile but not desktop, it’s almost always because it’s not mobile friendly. Google Search Console should provide actionable feedback.

commented: While I understand this, so many don't or rather "donut." +16
Be a part of the DaniWeb community

We're a friendly, industry-focused community of developers, IT pros, digital marketers, and technology enthusiasts meeting, networking, learning, and sharing knowledge.