Need to redirect mobile URLs to regular URLs when switching to responsive site?

Just get rid of whatever redirects the user, but keep the mobile urls.

Because you would have gotten rid of all redirects, alternates, canonicals, etc BS, it will be as if they are gone without being gone. Eventually, the mobile pages will be ignored.

You could probably get rid of all that BS that I mentioned above and even delete the others with no problem.

If they were a one to one match, then they are treated as one page anyway. Having a responsive site means users would never be shown the others anyway.

Having a mobile site or pages, separate from the desktop, is a big fat mistake. It is too fraught with problems.

Paul

Yes, you need to redirect mobile URLs to the desktop urls with the same content.
No, if you set up 301 redirect that points to the same content.

Having a mobile site or pages separate from the desktop can be a problem if you have not set up them correctly, agreed that it takes more effort to handle them both. Thumbs up for responsive format!

Thanks for the comments guys although you guys are separating two different solutions, no?

Paul, are you saying I could probably just delete the desktop URLs? I think the desktop URLs are the ones that will become the URLs for the responsive site though. In that case I could delete the mobile URLs, right? I wish we never had split the URLs years ago!

Linkassistant, it seems as though you're saying I should setup 301 redirects.

Hello,

Yes, you need to redirect mobile URLs to the desktop urls with the same content. and use 301 redirection. Because you need to show search engine these URL are same.

Thanks,

Google should consider both urls one and the same. But, it needs to be tipped off to redirect the user to one or the other.

If none of those redirects exist, and nothing tells google to redirect a user, or to use the mobile for what is believed to be a mobile user, then google will send all visitors to the desktop.

Redirects are only to redirect those that are detected as on a mobile device that can't view a full desktop version.

Once you have the dynamic site shtuff in place, the mobile version is moot anyway. And google will love(?) that....

There is no reason to do any such nonsense to the old, unneeded mobile urls, or keep them. But, most webmasters are squeamish, so they want to keep them. You don't and won't need them.

There are two doors on a building. One door, the main one, goes directly to the big floor.

The other door is for people with packages, around the alley, behind a garbage can.

A sign on the main door says, if you have a package, go to the door around back.

One day the building decides to take all visitors, even with packages, through the main door.

They remove the sign that tells anyone with a package to go to the door around back.

Nobody ever in the normal course of visiting this building, will ever find the backdoor, nor will they ever need to.

Now, what if someone goes to the backdoor because they did before and have not read the front sign?

Google is different. They will ALWAYS go to the front door, looking for instructions. They will never go to the back door first without finding out if they need to.

Paul