Mobile unfriendly, blocked/unloaded resources but clean robots.txt

[Ede]

Hi again guys.
As from my search console google finds that three of my blog post-pages seem mobile unfriendly being to wide or elements being too close together. After having cleaned my Robots.txt and also having disabled the only plugin in concern there are still some css and js-files which dont seem to get loaded in time and seem to cause this problem. (ethos.css?ver=6.4.6, …)
Each time I test it’s a bit different hence the loading times in concern. These are blog posts there nothing more on the pages than an image and a bit text.

https://search.google.com/test/mobile-friendly -> Please have a few tests for the domains in the private window.

[rad]

Hi Hei,

Thanks for reaching out.

Cleaning robots.txt or deactivating plugin or script may not take effect instantly in google bot’s view. I recommend testing it again, I checked and there are all mobile friendly now as the resources are now loaded okay.

Thanks!

[Ede]

Thanks for the quick reply and testing. In your screenshot it says ‘Page loading issues’. What about those ?

Also within the search-console https://search.google.com/search-console/mobile-usability/drilldown one has the possibility to live-test again in order to solve the problems. The domains keeps coming up unfortunately.
Also testing with the test-domain above I’m getting different results, at least for the page-loading issues each time.

[rad]

Hi Hei,

It looks like some of the resources are still blocked, and the resources are coming from the theme and Wordpress core files. Is there any active security or firewall blocking the bots from your host/site? This isn’t related to Wordpress or theme anymore and it can’t be fixed by code, for that, I recommend contacting your hosting provider to see what’s really going on behind those requests.

Would you mind providing some screenshots about the search console issues? I couldn’t test it since I’m not the owner of the site. Plus, it’s more likely connectivity or accessibility between Google and your site, I recommend contacting both sides too (google and hosting)

Thanks!

[Ede]

Hey.
No security plugin or firewalls. Being at a very good and popular hosting company and not having any problems with many other sites, also wordpress-sites regarding that issue, so it must be related to either wordpress or the theme or both. Also ‘blocked’ would mean it’s always the same sources showing up, that not the case it’s a bit different every time.

How do you know that it’s not a loading time issue?
Are you sure that your demos have 0 blocked resources if I may ask? (Have you tested it for your demos yourself? as you’ve overseen the important bits above and mentioned ‘all mobile friendly now as the resources are now loaded okay.’)
Do you have a demo which doesnt block google-bot I could test the blog pages from for this issue?

The search-console live-test doesnt offer more information unfortunetly besides that the error still seem to exist on the domains in concern

[Ede]

Just had a brief check https://www.grooow.io/x-theme-examples/ and already the first page shows a similar check. Any ideas?

[rad]

Hi Hei,

It could happen on any host, in fact, most popular hosts implement security and firewall. That makes their hosting environment more preferable and trustworthy among others. What I’m saying is, please check it with your hosting to get more information what and why some of the resources are being blocked. Wordpress and theme has no capability to monitor what’s being blocked, I love to see and find what’s really going on but unfortunately I can’t without any information.

And yes, it’s always the same resources I retried it over and over. The only difference is when you checked it and once I checked it so I’m not sure what resources you were seeing. But what I confirm is, it’s mobile friendly on my view as per screenshot.

It’s not a loading issue since it loads on a standard browser, both desktop, and mobile. It’s not just loading on google bot (crawler), please check this https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/6352293#blocked-resources (it’s from Learn More button on the mobile friendly test)

The resource wasn’t loadable in a reasonable amount of time. In this case, try running the test again. If it continues to happen, consider hosting the resource somewhere else, or else try to discover and fix the reason for lack of response from the host.

Not the case, it loads fast on desktop and mobile (actual devices)

The resource does not exist in the location listed (404 error). Fix the resource URL.

It’s loading on desktop and mobile without 404, I used browser developer tools to check it.

The resource is inaccessible to non-logged-in users. The test accesses the page as an anonymous user; ensure that all resources are accessible to anonymous users.

It’s accessible to non-logged in users, as you havent provided any login at all when I checked it.

The resource is blocked to Googlebot by a robots.txt file. If the resource is important (see below), if it is on your own site, you might want to unblock the resource to Googlebot; if it is on another site, you might want to contact the site’s webmaster and ask to have it unblocked.

Now, this is up to you and I can’t confirm it since I have no access to your site.

And our demos have robots.txt that blocks google bot because it doesn’t need to be indexed, its main purpose is just a demo.

It’s intentional on our demo’s environment, but it’s not part of the demo and it shouldn’t be carried on anyone’s site once the demo is imported. The demo only contains data, images, and no files are imported to Wordpress root path (where robots.txt is present), nor to theme folders.

And google console has its own tool for robots.txt, like here

You can utilize the tools and check it on your site.

And about this site, https://www.grooow.io/x-theme-examples/. Please check the resources,

You’ll see that the resources are coming from minified files, which is generated by cache plugin and they aren’t loaded by google bot (skipped). And it’s completely different from your site (comparison of the resources).

Again, please contact your hosting provider to get more information about this. It’s not just the theme resources are being blocked from your site, but also the resources that are built to Wordpress itself.

Thanks!

[Ede]

Thanks for the extensive answer, appreciated!

Checked the 2nd blog posts-link three times in a row and three times the blocked resources are totally different, besides the first one, which again doesnt look like a firewall-block or similar to me. Attached you the screenshots in the private note alongside the site-credentials (site is in production)

No sources blocked by the robots.txt as far as i can tell, have a look yourself please, the link is in the secure-note of the first post still. No problems or warnings about it in the search-console.

As for your own demos, the question was more about if you are sure you dont have problems like this on your demo-pages.

What should I ask my hoster precisely? If they have a firewall blocking only some random local sources from google bot? I doubt they do…but let me know

[Ede]

Checked the search console again and after re-indexing the three pages in concern, it’s only one page with problems (see secure note). Regardless, the above mentioned also applies for this domain. All three domains have blocked resources…

[christopher]

Hi Hei,

Thank you for the information. I checked the website and don’t know why this is happening in your case. Please consider that we are the theme developer and blocking of resources is a hosting related problem and not code related one. I just want to make sure you do understand that the problem you are experiencing is not what is caused by the code. The code of our theme can not block resources you mentioned in the screenshots.

So we are not the correct people to be able to help you on this matter and you need to talk to the hosting experts regarding this.

Thank you for your understanding.