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Michael7S
Michael7S
Participant
May 23, 2018
Question

"Your page is not mobile-friendly" label from Google for mobile-optimized PDF

  • May 23, 2018
  • 1 reply
  • 1638 views

Our PDFs are getting marked by Google as   "Your page is not mobile-friendly."  Given Google's emphasis on favoring mobile-friendly pages we'd like to avoid that label.

But the labeling of our PDFs by Google seems entirely inconsistent with Google's recommendations. Large, image-fat PDFs (6+mb) are not labeled with the warning, yet tiny optimized PDFs with just a logo and text, embedded fonts etc. are marked as "not mobile-friendly."

Is there an established setting to please Google?   

Here's our checklist so far:

  • Confirm text readable
  • Downsize images
  • Ensure we use embedded [and/or embedded subset] fonts
  • In Adobe Acrobat Pro DC. we choose "Save as Other", "Optimized PDF" and change the setting in the top left to "Mobile". 
  • Upload new optimized PDF and request indexing in Google Search Console.
  • Wait two weeks
  • Try again.

And yet... our new "Optimized"  PDFs are still listed as "not mobile-friendly."  And bulky PDFs that break many of the guidelines seem to escape that label. 

Can we get some clearer guidelines?

-Michael

P.S. Note we are seeing "Your page is not mobile-friendly." message as an annotation in our SERPS while Chrome is logged into our Search Console account.Testing the site's PDF urls in Google's Mobile-Friendly Test yields "Oops! Something went wrong Please wait a bit and try again" over the last 6 weeks.

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1 reply

Dov Isaacs
Dov Isaacs
Legend
May 23, 2018

Maybe you ought to query Google directly. They are the ones so-labelling your files. (Not as if Google is the world's expert on PDF!)

          - Dov

- Dov Isaacs, former Adobe Principal Scientist (April 30, 1990 - May 30, 2021)
    Michael7S
    Michael7SAuthor
    Participant
    May 23, 2018

    Thanks Dov.  Posted in Google's Webmaster (Search Console) forums earlier today and will definitely share any relevant answers here.  This has got to be a significant and growing issue for the majority of Acrobat users who put content on the web (perhaps not?), thus hoping Adobe or other experienced users have an answer. 

    -Michael

    Dov Isaacs
    Dov Isaacs
    Legend
    May 23, 2018

    Looking forward to any official response that Google might give.

    FWIW, Google does not participate in any ISO or any other PDF standards groups or industry associations and their PDF viewers in Chrome are really subset viewers with very low functionality in terms of PDF manipulation and viewing options.

              - Dov

    - Dov Isaacs, former Adobe Principal Scientist (April 30, 1990 - May 30, 2021)
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