Moz Q&A is closed.
After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.
Google Search Console - Why is my average mobile position better than my average desktop position?
-
I'm wondering why my average mobile position is much better than my average desktop position. I'm wondering if Google is comparing the same queries for both mobile vs desktop or if they're only showing me the top ranked for each type of search.
Is it example 1 or 2?
Example 1: Desktop may have 5,000 ranking queries that average to 21.6
Mobile may have 1,500 ranking queries that average to 8.5OR
Example 2: example.com has 5,000 total ranking keywords, those queries' average ranking in a desktop search 21.6 and mobile search 8.5.
I'm curious to know exactly what I'm seeing in Google's Search Console.

-
Sounds like you rank for a lot more terms on desktop than mobile, and probably not as well for a lot of those terms. In addition, it could be that a lot of the mobile searchers are in your area, which tends to make you rank higher because of the localization.
-
One factor could be your competition is not considered mobile friendly, so they are excluded and that would bring your rank up.
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
-
Getting google impressions for a site not in the index...
Hi all Wondering if i could pick the brains of those wise than myself... my client has an https website with tons of pages indexed and all ranking well, however somehow they managed to also set their server up so that non https versions of the pages were getting indexed and thus we had the same page indexed twice in the engine but on slightly different urls (it uses a cms so all the internal links are relative too). The non https is mainly used as a dev testing environment. Upon seeing this we did a google remove request in WMT, and added noindex in the robots and that saw the index pages drop over night. See image 1. However, the site still appears to getting return for a couple of 100 searches a day! The main site gets about 25,000 impressions so it's way down but i'm puzzled as to how a site which has been blocked can appear for that many searches and if we are still liable for duplicate content issues. Any thoughts are most welcome. Sorry, I am unable to share the site name i'm afraid. Client is very strict on this. Thanks, Carl image1.png
Reporting & Analytics | | carl_daedricdigital0 -
How can I see what Google sees when it crawls my page?
In other words, how can see the text and what not it sees from start to finish on each page. I know there was a site, but I can't remember it.
Reporting & Analytics | | tiffany11030 -
Google Analytics - Next Page Path is the Same URL?
Hey Everyone, I have a Google analytics question. I'm looking through a client's site and when I look at the next page path, I get the same URL as the next path. For example, on the homepage, the next page path I get is the homepage again? This happens for all URL's, is this an implementation error? Is there a way to fix this? Thanks!
Reporting & Analytics | | EvansHunt0 -
Is it possible to use Google Tag Manager to pass a user’s text input into a form field to Google analytics?
Hey Everyone, I finally figured out how to use auto event tracking with Google Tag Manager, but didn't get the data I wanted. I want to see what users are typing into the search field on my site (the URL structure of my site isn't set up properly to use GA's built-in site search tracking). So, I set up the form submit event tracking in Google Tag Manager and used the following as my event tracking parameters: Category: Search Action: Search Value When I test and look in Google Analytics I just see: "search" and "search value." I wanted to see the text that I searched on my site. Not just the Action and Category of the event.... Is what I'm trying to do even possible? Do I need to set up a different event tracking parameter? Thanks everyone!
Reporting & Analytics | | DaveGuyMan0 -
How do I manually add transactions to Google Analytics
We are seeing Google Analytic's drop transaction on our site so therefore all the figures are skewed. Is there a way I can manually add transactions to GA to cover the missing one?
Reporting & Analytics | | Towelsrus0 -
Google Analytics for multiple languages on multiple domains
Hi folks A quick question in regards to setting up Google Analytics for a website with multiple languages on multiple domains. The domains that needs to be tracked are: www.example.com -> English www.example.se -> Swedish www.example.dk -> Danish To my best knowledge this can be acheived in Google Analytids using 3 different setups: Different accounts Different properties Profiles What would you guys consider the best approach?
Reporting & Analytics | | Resultify
Pros and cons? Have a great day Fredrik0 -
500 errors and impact on google rankings
Since the launch of our newly designed website about 6 months ago, we are experiencing a high number of 500 server errors (>2000). Attempts to resolve these errors have been unsuccessful to date. We have just started to notice a consistent and sustained drop in rankings despite our hard sought efforts to correct. Two questions... can very high levels of 500 errors adversely effect our google rankings? And, if this is the case, what type of specialist (what are they called) has expertise to investigate and fix this issue. I should also mention that the sitemap also goes down on a regular basis, which some have stated is due to the size of the site (>500 pages). Don't know if they're part of the same problem? Thanks.
Reporting & Analytics | | ahw0 -
Weird info from google analytics?
Hi Could anyone explain what these visits are in Google Analytics? Under traffic sources and organic I am seeing lots of entries with data like below. Any ideas what kind of traffic this is? Is it a bot and if so what is their purpose of it and is it recommended that you block it? Pages/Visit 1.00 Avg. Time on Site 00:00:00 % New Visits : 100% Bounce Rate: 100.00% Many Thanks
Reporting & Analytics | | ocelot0