Do search results differ greatly when you search on mobile?
-
If you have a site with responsive design, is Google likely to look upon you more favourably and dramatically change rankings?
-
Hard to say how much Google rank mobile friendly website more, it depends on intent mostly. Mobile does differ based on localised results.
-
Does mobile search differ primarily with things like localized results? Or is Google likely to actually switch up the rankings based on sites that are more mobile friendly?
-
Yes, results can differ when searching on mobile compared to desktop. Ushave usually differs different intent when searching on mobile and search engines will react to this.
Google does favour responsive design. One of the key reasons for this is because the problem of having duplicate content is significantly reduced. Previously, you would have had at least two URLs - one for your mobile site and the other for your desktop version. With responsive web design, all content is held within one site with a single URL. This not only benefits the user but it also allows search engines to crawl your website much easier.
You can read more about Google's recommendation to use responsive web design below:
https://developers.google.com/webmasters/smartphone-sites/details
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Displaying Vanity URL in Google Search Result
Hi Moz! Not sure if this has been asked before, but is there any way to tell Google to display a vanity URL (that has been 301d) instead of the actual URL in the SERP? Example: www.domainA.com is a vanity URL (bought specifically for Brand Identity reasons) that redirects to www.domainB.com. Is it possible to have the domainA Url show up in Google for a Branded search query? Thanks in advance! Arjun
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Lauriedechaseaux0 -
Duplicate content across different domains
Hi Guys, Looking for some advice regarding duplicate content across different domains. I have reviewed some previous Q&A on this topic e.g. https://moz.com/community/q/two-different-domains-exact-same-content but just want to confirm if I'm missing anything. Basically, we have a client which has 1 site (call this site A) which has solids rankings. They have decided to build a new site (site B), which contains 50% duplicate pages and content from site A. Our recommendation to them was to make the content on site B as unique as possible but they want to launch asap, so not enough time. They will eventually transfer over to unique content on the website but in the short-term, it will be duplicate content. John Mueller from Google has said several times that there is no duplicate content penalty. So assuming this is correct site A should be fine, no ranking losses. Any disagree with this? Assuming we don't want to leave this to chance or assume John Mueller is correct would the next best thing to do is setup rel canonical tags between site A and site B on the pages with duplicate content? Then once we have unique content ready, execute that content on the site and remove the canonical tags. Any suggestions or advice would be very much appreciated! Cheers, Chris
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | jayoliverwright0 -
Desktop vs. Mobile Website - ranking impact
Working on develop mobile pages using dynamic serving method, we are planing on only develop number of important pages (not the whole site) to be mobile friendly. To keep the consistency of the user experience, the new mobile site will only have internal links to pages that are mobile friend. Questions: If an existing non-mobile page ranking #1 on mobile SERP today, this page will not have a mobile friendly version, and will not link in the mobilefriendly site. will there be any impact to the ranking. Assuming: When Google mobile/Smartphone bots will not see a link to this page. The page will still accessible to Google desktop bots.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | tomchu0 -
Title Tag Verses H1 Tag. Is having both the same better than different if there's only one clear winner in keyword search volume
Hi Mozzers, I am going through my categories on my eccomerce hire site trying to improve things and just wanted to check this query with you My understanding is that if I have the same H1 and title tag, then that would give more weight for that keyword phrase? Would I also be correct in assuming that the H1 is more important than the title tag or should both be treated as equals in terms of SEO. My dimemla is that for certain products we hire, there's only really one clear winner in terms of keyword phrase. The others I find in keyword planner are way down the volume list , so I have tended to put the H1 and title tag as the same and then have H2 tag and a slightly different heading. Is that the best philosphy or should I really mix them up , so the the title tag, h1, h2 are different ? Also Currently My on page content mentions the the H1 tag near the beginning of the content. Is this correct or should I really be using the H2 tag phrase near the beginning of the content. For example - One of the products we hire out is carpet cleaners. Therefore the main keyword phrase is carpet cleaner hire
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | PeteC12
and for our local pages its' carpet cleaner hire <city name="">.
This is my title tag and H1 tag and then for my h2 tag , I have something like "carpet cleaning equipment" with the content
mentioning carpet cleaner hire near the beginning.</city> I don't want to look likes its over optimization or mention the word hire to much but being a hire website, it's difficult not to and other keywords that don't mention it in it, are to varied so could increase bounce rates ?. When I look in GWT against my content keywords - the word hire shows a full bar. Just wondered what peoples thoughts are if what I am doing it okay?
thanks
Pete0 -
How do we preserve images in google search after CMS migration?
Hi Folks we are about to migrate to a new CMS (bigcommerce/volusion type of thing) are are advised that we will preserve our google love for our old URLS with 301 re-directs. OK but what about images that show in search (we have a lot of our images show up high in relevant google image search) will this method work the same or should we do something else to keep the image benefits? many thanks Tom
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | tomnivore0 -
Breadcrumbs showing up in every snippet in search
Ok I created breadcrumbs on my site long ago. They popup every time which what i'm concerned about. I wanted them to pop up for searches that lead to my homepage, but the breadcrumbs pop up for every product and every page on my site. My question is does this hurt searches for the link part of it. As you know search engines check title link and descriptions. Will my link not be counted in or is the breadcrumb purely cosmetic. Just want to know if i'm limiting my rank. Here's a product that should show its own breadcrumb type "Bia Brazil BT3341 BKS-Sexy" in google to see example. I should be number one under ads My code that creates breadcrumbs is as follows: Tops Shorts Best Fit By Brazil Capris Bia Brazil Sexy Leggings Sexy Workout Clothes 15% OFF I REMOVED CODE FROM WEBSITE FOR NOW UNTIL I FIGURE OUT. HOPEFULLY SOMEONE ANSWERS BEFORE search results change thx.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | realmccoy1010 -
Block search bots on staging server
I want to block bots from all of our client sites on our staging server. Since robots.txt files can easily be copied over when moving a site to production, how can i block bots/crawlers from our staging server (at the server level), but still allow our clients to see/preview their site before launch?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | BlueView13010 -
Why do I have better results with absolute search
Hi, I completed the optimization of my website, and while my rankings have improved, i seem to have consistently better resultats with absolute search terms: ex: i'm better ranked on "word1 word2" than just word1 word2 without the guillemets. Do you have any idea why? As most people perform search without guillemets, i would like to improve my rankings with these searches too. thanks, cedric
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | smartgrains0