: How to redirect to a mobile site that doesn't have a 1:1 ratio to desktop site? I have a desktop site with loads of old Flash games on it. Since there wasn't any way of easily porting

@Cody1181609

Redirecting multiple pages to home page m.example.com - Bad Practice

The above is not at all recommended because this is considered as a soft 404 by google and hence would downgrade the seo performance of the pages. As google says redicrection from Page A to Page B should be meaningful i.e. the content is same only the site structure has changed and still the same content is getting served.

Having one to one mapping between desktop and mobile - Good Practice

Ideally you should have one to one mapping as in if a page exist on example.com it should ideally exists on m.example.com though the content might differ

Example : On desktop you might present flash games while on mobile it can be html5. Goolge won't penalize you for that. Rather this is recommended practice to make your mobile site lighter than desktop.

Also having one to one mapping i.e. a page A on mobile as well as desktop is important to let users on all device platforms access your site.

The main thing is that if Page A on Desktop is serving content A then on mobile also it should serve content A, the representation may be different , the content may be a sub part of what shown in desktop but it should have same meaning to the user/crawlers.

So you can make examle.com/pagen ---301 Redirect --> m.example.com/pagen on mobile

If you are planning to create 0,N pages on mobile out of N on desktop rather than complete set

In this case if you are planning to create a html game-a on mobile similar to desktop flash version, then an apple to apple redirect would be preferr
ed:

So you can make examle.com/pagen ---301 Redirect --> m.example.com/pagen on mobile

Since the content does not exist at all on mobile, you can redirect that to home page

So you can make examle.com/pagen ---301 Redirect --> m.example.com on mobile

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@Ann8826881

(More of a collection of thoughts, rather than "an answer", but anyway...)



You need to think about what is best for your users.

Redirecting multiple pages to the homepage is not recommended simply because it usually gives a bad experience for your users. They find themselves on a page that is unrelated to what they have searched for.

You should only redirect if you have something equivalent to redirect to.


I have a completely different mobile site


Maybe you have a completely different site. Period. If they are "completely different" then maybe they should not be marketed as "the same", but for different platforms?


I have a desktop site with loads of old Flash games on it.


Maybe you shouldn't be too hasty to discard Flash on mobile? There are several browsers available for both Android and iOS that do support Flash. If a user is determined to play Flash on their mobile device they can. If a user has searched for "old Flash games" on their mobile device then maybe they have a Flash-capable mobile device they want to play some old Flash games on? Being redirected in this instance could be annoying.

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