Do search enginges prefer pages with mobile websites on the mobile phone?
-
Let me explain what I want to know:
Somebody searches e.g. for a hotel on his mobile phone. Do the search engines rank websites with special mobile pages better than others? I am not considering the local factor here (let's say there are hotels nearby with or without mobile websites).
If not, is there a trend for that?
Does anyone have some datas / examples / experience about that?
-
Hello Petra,
The "right" question to ask would rather be - how will this be in the (close) future - and the answer is that it will be more and more important to have mobile optimized versions.
You should use a rel=canonical back to your desktop/web version though. Here's an excellent QA which hints at what I wrote above as well: http://www.seroundtable.com/single-url-mobile-seo-13521.html
It's okay to redirect to a subdomain or subfolder but if you aim for the 100% you should not (it's not always possible, I know).best regards,
Jan -
Thank you for your reply
-
My experience has been that the answer is (unfortunately) - sometimes.
There appear to be some cases where Google's algo does bias toward mobile-friendly and mobile-specific versions of pages, and other times where they appear to have little to no impact. It's hard to pin down when, where and why, but I suspect things like browser version on the phone, the type of device and Google's interpretation of the query and its specificity to needing a mobile version all play a role.
I will say that over the past few years, I've seen less and less mobile-specific biasing and rewarding by Google. I wrote about this here - http://www.seomoz.org/blog/whats-the-future-of-mobile-search-and-seo
Hope that helps!
-
This is a great question, and one for which I searching for answers. The company that I do in house SEO for has a mobile version of the website on a subfolder. The mobile site has around 8,000 pages indexed. However, when I search google from my android it only returns results for the non-mobile version of the site.
I thought google would appreciate us taking the time to create a mobile site, and reward us by displaying the mobile version in their mobile search results. As far as google is concerned, the only way to get to the mobile site is to find the mobile link on our regular site. Again, 8,000 mobile pages are indexed in google (and I have verified this).
-
Not seen a huge correlation between ranking and mobile site or Google display mobile pages on mobile devices instead of web pages. There have been some studies that show the differences though.
However, I personally lean more towards building a mobile site because I am big proponent of usability and I don't feel that at the current state normal web pages are mobile friendly. I believe that soon there will not be any difference in mobile and web pages when all of the sites will be designed to be universally accesible and this could result in mobile site bulding being obsolete but until then mobile sites are important.
Here are some good reports about mobile usability and how it differs from web usaiblity
http://www.esprockets.com/papers/kamvar-baluja.chi06.pdf
http://www.useit.com/alertbox/mobile-usability.html
Hope this helps.
Thanks
Sameer
-
I haven't gone in-depth with this but from my own observations the situation was clear. Presence of mobile version of the site will set Google's preference on choice of which site to display and not affect the actual position.
Has anyone tested to see if links to mobile site page version count towards the standards site and vice versa?
-
Hi Petra: I'm hoping someone with mobile experience jumps in, but I remembbered reading a post from Cindy Krum (suzzicks) about mobile sites that might address your question. I'll have to just give you the URL as the Q&A text box is a bit wonky for my browser:
-
Good question. The rub here is what would determine a good mobile site that the SEs would want to return more than the full site?
What if a site has no benifit having a mobile site vs. a full site? Using your example of a hotel, what benifits would an SE notice? Faster page loads? Sure. Better navigation? Can they determine that?
What I am getting at is that a mobile site is not necessarily better that the full site. Example being Facebook. They have a horrible mobile site. So I do not see why an SE would be bias to that. They might rank the mobile site instead of the full site when on mobile platforms.
BTW, I did a search on my iMac and iPhone for local hotels and Google returned the same results.
Cheers
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
-
Optimal Image Size for Website
What is the recommended size for an image on our website? What is the largest image size we can use without being penalised by Google? Thank you.
Image & Video Optimization | | CostumeD0 -
G+ branding page?
My company has a G+ page for each of our 60 locations. Do we need a branding page as well?
Image & Video Optimization | | SSFCU0 -
Google Local landing pages
Just wondering what the best way to handle the landing page from a google plus local profile is. I had changed it to page that I created for the specific location with a citation with correct NAP, but realized that in OSE that my root domain lost almost all its G+'s. I'm torn and just looking for some advice. I've done quite a bit of work trying to correct citations, adding citations, and reading reading reading to learn more about Google Local but the results have been pretty rough.
Image & Video Optimization | | jonnyholt0 -
On-page Local SEO
I'm wondering how to pull it off on-page local SEO for a financial institution website with 70 locations. However, they are broken in down in regions, which would make it easier to get our hands around. Would a viable solution be setting up regional pages? I don't know about our CMS capability, but it seems like it would be beneficial to have on each regional page aggregate local-centric press releases (example: a volunteer event or recognition) and local announcements such as paper shred days. Thoughts? Anyone else posed with a similar challenge?
Image & Video Optimization | | SSFCU0 -
Does displaying a mobile number for business hurt local SEO?
Perhaps a silly question but could someone please clarify if displaying a mobile number in the main site or Google places etc would hurt local SEO? Is having a regional landline/fixed telephone number a ranking factor? EDIT: This is for a UK site, does anyone have experience of this is UK please?
Image & Video Optimization | | Clicksjim0 -
Setting Up Localized City Pages and Duplicate Content issues
We are setting up landing pages on our site that will cater to specific cities, in an effort to be more relevant to the users in those cities and also capture more localized traffic. These regional pages will each have a unique paragraph at the top, but below that is a sentence or two about each product line that would be difficult to rewrite with quality more than 10 - 15 times. Would the paragraph at the top of the page be enough unique content (about 4-5 sentences)? Obviously the duplicate content wouldn't be to my advantage, but is it really necessary to rewrite the other sentences about the product lines? What's the most efficient method to complete this project in a whitehat fashion?
Image & Video Optimization | | InetAll0 -
Question Regarding Multiple Google Places Pages
Hello, One of my clients has about 20 different google places pages at locations that are not real. The previous SEO company thought that would help with local search. My problem is that several great reviews have been written on each page by real customers. I want to close the places pages for locations that don't exist, but I don't want to lose the reviews. Is anyone aware of a solution for this? I have searched Google's forums and have not found anything.
Image & Video Optimization | | Bjolley0 -
Listing in Local search
Hi, Are several listing in google places allowed ? I've got 1 address but with 3 differents services with 1 website for each activity . Tks a lot..
Image & Video Optimization | | mozllo0