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Issue guide · Mobile

Missing viewport meta tag

SeverityHigh
CategoryMobile
ScopePer page
EffortSmall
Verified byRe-crawl after you mark the task done
Rule keyviewport_missing

Short answer

The page has no <meta name="viewport"> tag. Mobile browsers then render it as if the screen were about 980 px wide and shrink the result to fit, so text is tiny and tap targets are too small. Google indexes the mobile version of every page (mobile-first indexing), so a page that is unusable on mobile is judged as such. Add <meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1"> to <head>; without a viewport the page opens at desktop width on mobile devices.

Why it matters

This issue affects how the page looks on mobile devices. The viewport tag is the single prerequisite for responsive design: without it, media queries never trigger and every mobile visitor gets a desktop page scaled to a quarter of its size. Lighthouse marks the page as not mobile-friendly, and the Core Web Vitals (INP especially) suffer.

How Glimana detects it

The rule fires for any 200 HTML page whose <head> has no viewport meta tag.

How to fix it

  1. Find the affected pages in Glimana. Open Issues › Missing viewport meta tag. Every affected page is a row; open one to see the evidence Glimana recorded for it (the measured value, the offending element or the target URL). The same list sits on the task card under Tasks, and the page's own detail view under Pages shows its full signals.

  2. Apply the fix on your platform.

    <meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1">

    Avoid maximum-scale=1 or user-scalable=no; they block pinch zoom and are an accessibility failure.

    Every modern theme includes the tag in header.php. If it is missing, the theme is very old or a plugin/optimizer is stripping <head> tags; switch theme or check the optimizer's "remove meta tags" options.

    All Shopify themes include it in layout/theme.liquid. If this fires, a custom layout file (layout/custom.liquid, a landing-page app) omitted it.

    Add the tag to the base layout. If the page is a raw HTML file or an email-style template served as a page, add it there.

  3. Publish and clear caches. Save and publish, then make sure the crawler will see the new version: WordPress — clear the page cache in your cache plugin and purge the CDN; Shopify — theme and content changes go live on save, but purge any CDN in front of the store; custom code — deploy and purge the edge cache. Check in a private window or with curl -s https://your-domain/page | grep -i '<title\|canonical\|robots' that the live HTML has changed; Glimana reads what the server sends, not what your browser has cached.

  4. Verify in Glimana. Open the task under Tasks and click Mark as done. The affected pages are queued for a verification crawl within a few hours, and the task closes when the page has a viewport meta tag. If the check still fails, the task returns to New with a note; when it passes, the task is listed under Resolved technical issues on Impact reports. To check sooner, use Re-crawl affected pages on the issue.

How the fix is verified

Re-crawl; the task closes when the page has a viewport meta tag.

Sources