Mobile site rank on Google S.E. instead of desktop site.

[Artience]

Hello, all SEOers~

Today, I would like to hear your opinion regarding on Mobile site and duplicate contents issue.

I have a mobile version of our website that is hosted on a subdomain (m instead www). Site is targeting UK and Its essentially the same content, formatted differently.  So every URL on www exists also at the "m" subdomain and is identical content. (there are some different contents, yet I could say about 90% or more contents are same)

Recently I've noticed that search results are showing links to our mobile site instead of the desktop site. (Google UK)

I have a sitemap.xml for both sites, the mobile sitemap defined as follows:

I didn't block googlebot from mobile site and also didn't block googlebot-mobile from desktop site.

I read and watched Google webmaster tool forum and related video from Matt Cutts. I found many opinion that there is possibility which cause duplicate contents issue and I should do one of followings.

1. Block googlebot from mobile site.

2. Use canonical Tag on mobile site which points to desktop site.

3. Create and develop different contents (needless to say...)

Do you think duplicate contents issue caused my mobile site rank on S.E. instead of my desktop site? also Do you think those method will help to show my desktop site on S.E.?

I was wondering that I have multi-country sites which is same site format as I mentioned above. However, my other country sites are totally doing fine on Google. Only difference that I found is my other country sites have different Title & Meta Tag comparing to desktop site, but my UK mobile site has same Title & Meta Tag comparing to desktop. Do you think this also has something to do with current problem?

Please people~! Feel free to make some comments and share your opinion.

Thanks for reading my long long explanation.

[marcinlejman]

Hi,

without a detailed review of your website, it is rather difficult to provide a definite answer. It is for example possible that you have links from your desktop site to your mobile site but not the other way round which would make your mobile content rank higher.

It is also possible that your mobile site is easier to crawl for bots because it is using a simpler navigation etc.

Generally, if the content is approximately the same, I agree that using canonical URLs could help.

[Webmaster_SEO]

As per Google, depending upon the user-agent you should display the website. So, for Googlebot-mobile only mobile site remains visible and for Googlebot (desktop) only desktop site is shown. Google preaches adding a 301 redirect to mobile version depending upon user-agent detection. Find complete article here:

http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2011/02/making-websites-mobile-friendly.html

This change should solve your current issues with the rankings