Google Search Console is Full of Contradictions

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Why is Google Search Console full of contradtions?

Playing by the rules for SEO should be easy.  Search Engines want something in a certain format, they want to be able to present the user who is searching with the best result for them.

So I try to do what they ask, and use their tools to check and validate what I'm doing.  An important page is a bit slow to load - speed it up.  Title tags duplicated - revise the content or remove the duplication.

Just recently, I've been looking at a site on Google Search Console.  It has a "Inspect Any URL" search bar at the top.  So after looking and seeing no unexpected errors for the site, I think I'd try the search on the home page.  Three green ticks!  What more could you ask for?

Looking at one of the ticks ("Coverage") in more detail, there was a throw-away comment:

Indexed, not submitted in sitemap

That's the most important page, how have we missed it off the sitemap?  A quick check of the sitemap, and sure enough, the home page is there.  Is it because the home page isn't a page and is just reference as the root of the site?  I've seen problems with references having or not having the forward slash.  I'll try both versions.  I get the same result.

Try another page, then, to eliminate the forward slash problem.

I get the same "Indexed, not submitted in sitemap".  Something is wrong here.

So maybe I've renamed the sitemap and not told Google, or not updated robots.txt or something.  Robots.txt is fine.  Let's check that Google has the right reference to the sitemap.  It does.

So let's look at what Google says it DOES have in the sitemap.  Sure enough, they have the home page and the other page I tested.  Let's try a third page, pick one right out of Google's list of pages they have as being in the sitemap.  The test fails!

Mobile Friendly

I then had a look at these pages for mobile friendliness and Google contradicts itself there too.  In the section.  In the section for "Mobile Usability".  Ever page is "Valid" with no pages reporting as Error.  Indeed, the site looks great on a mobile.  But again, drill into the page from the URL Inspection and "Test Live URL" and it throws up a whole host of errors.  It gives a rendering of the page which looks nothing like it does on my mobile, no matter which browser I use.

So what's happening?  Sad to report that I don't know, but maybe you'll find this post and realise you're not alone.  If I DO find an answer, I'll post an update.

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