Can the design still be considered adaptive if the URL is different?

[AliMac26]

I was under the impression our site had a mobile dedicated design, but my developers are telling me we have an adaptive design.

The mobile site is set up different and has different content and the url is as follows:

www.site.com/MobileView/MobileHome.aspx

Can it still be considered adaptive if the URL is not the exact same? Hopefully this make sense and I appreciate anyone's input!

[Adriaan.Multiply]

A responsive (or adaptive) website does not depend on URL structure, it's just responsive or it is not. Do you have a link to the real website? When you access the main url (site.com) with a mobile device, are you redirected to /mobileview/mobilehome.aspx?

A website is responsive when content stays the same, no matter what screen size or device is used to access the webpage.

If content served to a mobile device is different from content served to a desktop computer, you may not have a responsive/adaptive design and should be wary of Google's upcoming mobile-first index.

[AliMac26]

Thank you for the reply! Sorry for any confusion, I am just relaying the information I am receiving from designers and developers.

Yes, when you access the site from a mobile device you are sent to /mobileview/mobilehome.aspx.

The homepage banners, top navigation and footer can be made different on the mobile site, and stuff is hidden with CSS. According to my developers "the look is different but the data is the same."

So based off this, it sounds like we need to be careful of the upcoming Google update, right?

Thanks again for your input! It's much appreciated!

[Adriaan.Multiply]

You can read more here: http://searchengineland.com/faq-google-mobile-first-index-262751 

I don't think different banners, navigation or footers have real impact as you'd expect this to be different across screen sizes. I'd be concerned if my texts or internal linking are considerably different between both versions, or when there's content on the desktop version of the site that's not on the mobile version.

If 'stuff is hidden with CSS' means you're hiding texts, you should really look for a different solution as hiding text is against Google's guidelines.

[AliMac26]

Thanks again.

Do you have an opinion on adding a canonical tag to your mobile site that points to the domain root URL?

[Adriaan.Multiply]

I'm not sure why you would want to do this, you use a canonical when page A and B are more or less the same and you want Google to index only page A.

When page A and page B are different, a canonical would make no sense and Google will probably ignore it.