If you have ever opened Google Search Console, clicked on a URL to inspect it, and seen this:
Page fetch info: Failed: Redirect error
Indexing allowed? N/A
You know that strange feeling that follows. Is the blog broken? Did Google penalize the post? Is the page invisible to search engines forever? I went through all of those thoughts the first time I saw that message on my own Blogger site. I kept refreshing the page like something was going to change. Nothing did.
What eventually helped me was not a plugin, not a paid SEO tool, and not some complicated technical workaround. It was simply understanding what that message actually means. Once I understood it, the panic went away. And that is what this post is about.
If you are a Blogger user seeing this message in Google Search Console, this post was written specifically with your situation in mind. Not WordPress. Not a custom CMS. Blogger specifically, because this is one of those issues that behaves very differently depending on which platform you are on.
What Does "Page fetch info Failed: Redirect error" Actually Mean?
When Google visits your blog post to decide whether to index it, it sends a crawler called Googlebot Smartphone. This crawler mimics how a mobile user would visit your page. It fetches the URL, reads the content, and reports back what it found.
A "Page fetch info: Failed: Redirect error" message means that when Googlebot tried to fetch the URL you submitted, it did not land on a stable page. Instead, it was redirected somewhere else, and that redirect caused a problem. Google could not complete the fetch, so it could not properly evaluate the page for indexing. That is why "Indexing allowed?" shows as N/A. It is not a yes or a no. It is a blank because Google never got far enough to make that determination.
On WordPress, this error usually means something went wrong with how a URL redirect was configured. Redirect loops, broken chains, inconsistent HTTP to HTTPS setups. Those are real technical problems that need real technical fixes.
On Blogger, the cause is almost always something different entirely. And this distinction matters a lot, because the advice written for WordPress users does not apply to you.
Why Blogger Specifically Triggers This Error
Blogger has a built-in behaviour that most people do not think about until it causes a problem. When Googlebot Smartphone visits a standard Blogger post URL, for example:
https://yourdomain.com/2026/04/your-post-title.html
Blogger detects that the request is coming from a mobile user agent. Its system then automatically redirects that request to the mobile version of the page:
https://yourdomain.com/2026/04/your-post-title.html?m=1
That redirect is not something you set up. It is baked into how Blogger works. The platform handles mobile and desktop URLs separately, appending the ?m=1 parameter to signal the mobile version.
Here is where the problem begins. When you submit your canonical desktop URL to Google Search Console and Googlebot Smartphone tries to fetch it, Blogger immediately redirects it to the ?m=1 version. Google logs this as a redirect error during the fetch process, which is why you see "Page fetch info: Failed: Redirect error." The fetch failed because the URL redirected before Googlebot could settle on a stable page.
This is not a sign that your blog is broken. It is not a sign that your post has been penalized. It is Blogger doing exactly what it was designed to do.
The question is not why it is happening. The question is what to do about it.
Is This Error Hurting Your SEO?
This is the part that most people get wrong. They see the error and assume the post is not indexed and never will be. That assumption is not always accurate.
Google is more sophisticated than a simple fetch failure suggests. Even when the initial fetch of the canonical URL results in a redirect error, Google may still discover and index the mobile version of your page through other means: your sitemap, internal links from other indexed pages, or direct crawling of the ?m=1 URL. In many cases, the page ends up indexed anyway, just not through the route you originally submitted.
That said, seeing this error consistently across most of your posts is a signal worth paying attention to. It means Google is regularly encountering a redirect when it expects a clean fetch. At scale, that can affect how efficiently Googlebot crawls your site, which matters as your blog grows.
It also creates a situation where the version Google indexes may not match the canonical URL you intend for search results, which can lead to other issues like the "Alternate page with proper canonical tag" status showing up alongside this one.
If you have been seeing unusual indexing behaviour across your posts and want a broader picture of what might be going on, this post on How to Fix Blogger Posts That Got De-Indexed by Google covers some of the related causes in more detail.
What Bloggers Usually Try First (And Why It Does Not Help)
When I first encountered this error, I did what most people do. I searched for answers and followed advice that was written for a completely different situation. Here are the things I tried that made no difference at all.
Editing robots.txt
A lot of guides tell you to check your robots.txt file and make sure Googlebot is not being blocked. That is sound advice for WordPress. But on Blogger, the robots.txt file is managed by the platform, and unless you have manually added custom rules, it is not the source of this error. Editing it will not fix a redirect that is happening at the server level inside Blogger's mobile URL system.
Repeatedly requesting re-indexing
Using the "Request Indexing" button in Google Search Console for the canonical URL over and over is not effective here. Each time you submit, Googlebot Smartphone will visit the URL, hit the same redirect, and return the same result. The underlying behaviour has not changed, so the outcome will not change either.
Deleting and republishing the post
This is one of the more damaging things bloggers try when they panic about an indexing error. Deleting a post and republishing it does not fix the redirect behaviour. It just creates a new URL that starts from zero, losing whatever existing signals the original post had built up.
Changing the canonical tag in the theme
Some guides suggest switching between data:blog.url and data:blog.canonicalUrl in the theme's canonical tag. While getting the canonical tag right is genuinely important for Blogger SEO, it does not prevent Googlebot Smartphone from being redirected to the ?m=1 version when it fetches the page. The redirect happens before the canonical tag is even read.
If you have been down any of these roads without results, you are not alone. The reason none of them work is that they are all treating a symptom that does not exist on Blogger. The redirect error here is not caused by a misconfiguration you made. It is caused by how Blogger routes mobile traffic.
Understanding the ?m=1 URL and Its Role in Indexing
The ?m=1 parameter is Blogger's way of identifying the mobile version of a page. When a visitor or a bot arrives with a mobile user agent, Blogger serves the ?m=1 version. When a desktop user agent arrives, it serves the standard URL without the parameter.
Because Googlebot Smartphone uses a mobile user agent, it will almost always be redirected to the ?m=1 version when it visits a standard Blogger URL. This is consistent and predictable behaviour across the platform.
What this means in practice is that for many Blogger sites, the version Google actually crawls and indexes is the ?m=1 version, not the canonical desktop URL. If you check the URL Inspection tool in Google Search Console for a post that IS indexed, you may notice that the page Google selected as canonical is the mobile version.
This is not ideal from a canonical URL standpoint. But it also explains why many Blogger posts end up indexed despite the redirect error showing in Search Console. Google found a way in through the mobile URL, even if the fetch of the canonical URL failed.
For a broader look at why Blogger posts sometimes fail to index at all, including situations where neither the canonical nor the mobile URL gets picked up, this guide on How to Fix Google Search Console Redirect Error covers the wider context of redirect-related indexing problems.
What Actually Helped Me
I want to be clear here. What worked for me on my own Blogger site is based on my personal experience. Blogger sites can behave differently depending on domain setup, theme configuration, and canonical tag structure. My experience is not a universal guarantee, and your results may differ.
What I discovered was that instead of submitting the canonical desktop URL to Google Search Console and waiting for Googlebot to fail on the redirect, I started inspecting and submitting the ?m=1 version of the URL directly. That is the URL Googlebot Smartphone was actually landing on. Submitting it directly meant Google could fetch it without encountering a redirect, because it was already at the final destination.
After doing this, the fetch results came back clean. The "Page fetch info: Failed: Redirect error" message disappeared for those URLs, and indexing moved noticeably faster.
I am sharing this because it made a real difference for me, not because I am telling you it will solve everything for you. Blogger's behaviour around mobile URLs is platform-level, which means outcomes can vary depending on your specific setup. If you try it and it works, great. If your setup behaves differently, that is also possible.
The broader point is this: if the URL Googlebot is actually landing on is the ?m=1 version, then that is the URL worth inspecting and working with in Search Console, regardless of whether you end up submitting it manually.
The Bigger Picture: Blogger and Mobile-First Indexing
Google switched to mobile-first indexing some years ago, which means Googlebot Smartphone is now the primary crawler for most websites. This has implications for Blogger that are worth understanding.
Because Blogger routes mobile user agents to ?m=1 URLs, and because Googlebot Smartphone is the primary crawler, the practical reality for many Blogger sites is that Google is predominantly interacting with the mobile versions of pages. Not the canonical desktop versions that you see in your browser when you visit your own blog on a computer.
This is not a death sentence for your SEO. Blogger's mobile pages render the same content as the desktop versions. Google can read them. But it does mean that the canonical URL situation on Blogger is more complicated than it would be on a platform that uses responsive design and serves one URL for all devices.
Understanding this helped me stop fighting the platform and start working with it. Rather than trying to force Google to index the desktop URL when Blogger keeps redirecting Googlebot to the mobile version, it made more sense to understand what was actually happening and adjust how I was monitoring and managing indexing accordingly.
Things Worth Checking on Your Blogger Site
While the redirect error is often platform-level and not caused by something you did, there are a few things worth verifying to make sure nothing else is compounding the problem.
Check your canonical tag setup
Open your Blogger theme HTML and look for the canonical tag. It should use data:blog.canonicalUrl rather than data:blog.url. The canonicalUrl variable points to the proper canonical version of the page. Using data:blog.url can sometimes return the mobile URL itself as the canonical, which creates a confusing signal for Google.
Check your robots.txt for custom disallow rules
If you have added custom rules to your Blogger robots.txt, check whether any of them include a disallow for URLs with the ?m=1 parameter. A rule like Disallow: /*?m=1 would block Googlebot from crawling the mobile versions of your pages entirely, which would cause indexing problems on top of the redirect error. If that rule exists, removing it is important.
Make sure HTTPS redirect is enabled
In your Blogger settings, confirm that the HTTPS redirect option is turned on. If your blog can be accessed via both HTTP and HTTPS, that creates an additional layer of redirect that Googlebot has to navigate. Forcing HTTPS keeps the path cleaner.
Check your custom domain setup if applicable
If your blog runs on a custom domain rather than a blogspot address, domain configuration issues can sometimes layer on top of the mobile redirect issue and make things more complicated. If you have recently set up or changed your domain and started seeing these errors, the domain setup itself may be contributing. This post on Blogger Custom Domain Not Working walks through the most common domain configuration problems and how to approach them.
How to Read the URL Inspection Tool More Accurately
One of the most useful things you can do in Google Search Console is use the URL Inspection tool not just to check status, but to understand what Google actually sees when it visits your pages.
When you inspect a URL and see the redirect error, scroll down and look at the "Google-selected canonical" field. This tells you which URL Google has chosen as the authoritative version of the page. If it shows the ?m=1 version, that is the URL Google considers the real page. If it shows the desktop URL you intended, Google has accepted your canonical signal despite the fetch issue.
Also look at the "Coverage" section and the "Referring page" field. If your post has been discovered through internal links from other indexed pages, Google may already know about it even if the direct fetch failed.
The URL Inspection tool gives you a much more complete picture than the indexing status alone. A page can show a redirect error on fetch and still be indexed through other discovery paths. And a page that shows no errors in the fetch can still fail to be indexed if the content does not meet quality standards.
This is why troubleshooting indexing issues on Blogger requires looking at the full picture rather than fixating on one error message. Speaking of which, if your posts are indexed but then disappear from search results, that is a different problem worth addressing separately. The guide on How to Fix Blogger Posts That Got De-Indexed by Google covers the reasons that happens and how to recover.
A Word on Patience and Perspective
I want to say something honest here, because I think it is more useful than pretending every SEO problem has a clean solution.
Blogger is a platform with real limitations. Some of those limitations show up in Google Search Console in ways that look alarming but are actually just the platform doing what it does. The "Page fetch info: Failed: Redirect error / Indexing allowed? N/A" message is one of those cases where the error is real, the cause is platform-level, and the solution is more about understanding and adapting than about fixing something that is broken.
That does not mean Blogger cannot rank. It can, and it does. But building a successful blog on Blogger means accepting some of its quirks as background noise and focusing your energy on the things that actually move the needle: consistent content, strong internal linking, and genuine E-E-A-T signals through real experience and depth.
There was a period where I spent more time worrying about Search Console errors than I did writing. The errors felt urgent. The writing felt slow. In hindsight, the posts I kept writing during that period are the ones doing the most work for my blog today. The errors I was panicking about are mostly footnotes.
If you are feeling that way right now, this post on When I Felt Like Quitting Blogging might be worth reading. Not because it fixes a technical problem, but because sometimes the most useful thing is a reminder that the slow, frustrating phase is part of the process.
Summary: What to Take Away From This
Here is the short version of everything covered in this post.
The "Page fetch info: Failed: Redirect error / Indexing allowed? N/A" message in Google Search Console appears on Blogger sites because Googlebot Smartphone gets redirected from the canonical desktop URL to the ?m=1 mobile version when it tries to fetch the page. This is Blogger's built-in mobile routing behaviour, not a mistake you made.
The error does not automatically mean
your page is not indexed. Google may still discover and index the page through the mobile URL, your sitemap, or internal links. But it does mean the fetch of the URL you submitted failed, and at scale this is worth understanding and managing.
Editing robots.txt, requesting re-indexing of the same canonical URL repeatedly, or deleting and republishing posts will not resolve this. The root cause is platform-level.
Understanding what Googlebot is actually landing on when it visits your blog, and working with that reality rather than against it, is the more productive approach. Check your canonical tag setup, verify your HTTPS settings, and use the URL Inspection tool to understand what Google actually sees rather than just what the status label says.
Most importantly, do not let one error message in Search Console become the thing that stops you from doing the actual work of building your blog. Google Search Console is a diagnostic tool. It is there to inform you, not to paralyse you.
Keep publishing. Keep improving your content. The technical side of Blogger SEO is learnable, and understanding errors like this one is part of that process.
See you in my next post 😊
