Mobile Design - CSS Question

aarondicks

New Member
Hi guys,

I've been reading this slideshow over and over: http://www.slideshare.net/bryanrieger/rethinking-the-mobile-web-by-yiibu

We're looking at building our site following the 'Mobile First' principle, but wonder whether there will be any repercussions from Google.

By setting the 'default' CSS to mobile, and including other versions in media queries (only based on width), and then positioning the unused desktop elements absolutely off the screen in the mobile version, will Google penalise us?

Everything will be visible on the Desktop version.

What width would Google "view" our website at.

Thanks
Aaron
EvoEnergy
 

chrishirst

Well-Known Member
Staff member
Google doesn't "view your pages" it all.

Search engines simply make http: or https: requests to URLs and reads the HTML source code that is served to them into the datacentre that made the request, that is then indexed at a later stage.
 

chrishirst

Well-Known Member
Staff member
will Google penalise us?
What is this strange idea that Google is going to "penalise" your document URLs for using a particular design method??

Penalties are given for blatently using methods with the intention of "fooling" their ranking algorithm.
 

CaldwellYSR

Member
Google has no idea what you're CSS is doing. As Chris said. Google looks at your html and makes sure the content is clean. This shouldn't change between mobile and desktop designs.
 

Phreaddee

Super Moderator
Staff member
Google recently announced that responsive design was their preferred way for providing mobile content.
 

chrishirst

Well-Known Member
Staff member
True! However that is for simply for "deciding" what document URls are suitable to be shown to users of their mobile search, which may or may not be searchers who are simply using Google in a browser on their mobile device.

Also, it appears that the criteria for a document being determined as "mobile friendly" is the viewport meta directive
 
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