versions (the new pages). These redirects need to be done on a per-URL basis,
individually from each mobile URLs to the responsive URLs.
conditional redirects or a vary HTTP header.
rel=canonical on the responsive URLs pointing to themselves
(self-referential canonicals).
If you’re currently using dynamic serving and want to move to responsive design,
you don’t need to add or change any redirects.
Some benefits for moving to responsive web design
Moving to a responsive site should make maintenance and reporting much easier
for you down the road. Aside from no longer needing to manage separate URLs for
all pages, it will also make it much easier to adopt practices and technologies
such as hreflang for internationalization, AMP for speed, structured data for
advanced search features and more.
As always, if you need more help you can ask a question in our webmaster forum.
With more sites moving towards responsive web design, many webmasters have
questions about migrating from separate
mobile URLs, also frequently known as “m-dot URLs”, to using responsive
web design. Here are some recommendations on how to move from separate urls
to one responsive URL in a way that gives your sites the best chance of
performing well on Google’s search results.
Moving to responsive sites in a Googlebot-friendly way
Once you have your responsive site ready, moving is something you can definitely
do with just a bit of forethought. Considering your URLs stay the same for
desktop version, all you have to do is to configure 301 redirects from the
mobile URLs to the responsive web URLs.
Here are the detailed steps:
- Get your responsive site ready
- Configure 301 redirects on the old mobile URLs to point to the responsive
versions (the new pages). These redirects need to be done on a per-URL basis,
individually from each mobile URLs to the responsive URLs. - Remove any mobile-URL specific configuration your site might have, such as
conditional redirects or a vary HTTP header. - As a good practice, setup
rel=canonical on the responsive URLs pointing to themselves
(self-referential canonicals).
If you’re currently using dynamic serving and want to move to responsive design,
you don’t need to add or change any redirects.
Some benefits for moving to responsive web design
Moving to a responsive site should make maintenance and reporting much easier
for you down the road. Aside from no longer needing to manage separate URLs for
all pages, it will also make it much easier to adopt practices and technologies
such as hreflang for internationalization, AMP for speed, structured data for
advanced search features and more.
As always, if you need more help you can ask a question in our webmaster forum.