Is there still any value in tracking keyword rankings for desktop?

[uniquedigital]

Seeing as everything is graduating towards mobile first, is there any value in tracking desktop and smartphone keywords separately?

[KristinaKledzik]

Hey Unique Digital,

It's a good question, and I hear what you're saying. If Google is crawling everything as a mobile crawler only, desktop rankings should basically be the same, right?

It might get there eventually, but I can say that it's definitely not there now. For one, Google is crawling mobile first, but it's also keeping an eye on desktop versions of sites. At the very least, I'm pretty sure Google is separating mobile and desktop UX metrics.

Also, on queries for my company's site (international money transfers), I can tell you that 1) Google does not show the same rankings between desktop and mobile. Mobile has more answer boxes, and I've noticed that if a site has an answer box, they're less likely to also have the #1 organic result.

So, at least for now, yes, you should track both.

Best,

Kristina

[effectdigital]

This depends entirely upon the site in question and what industry it falls into, as well as the target audience

The general rule is that for B2C mobile optimisations and tracking are superior as many transactions now happen on mobile. But in a B2B environment, particularly targeting office workers, most of them still use desktop terminals as their work-horses, and most of them make business transactions from a desktop machine

These general rules have exceptions, one big example is construction industry B2B. Although B2B is still predominantly desktop, if you are targeting workers, managers and supervisors on a construction site, much of their business decisions are made on mobile devices which bucks the trend

Think of your audience, who they are, and what device they will be in front of as / before / during their transaction