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
-
Gallery page with text below, Or split into two pages
So i'm a professional photographer, so my gallery is pretty important, probably more imprtant than the copy supporting it. Right now I have a gallery with supplementary info pushed below. I'm wondering if it would be better to remove the text from the bottom and put it to the top of it's own page, and leave the gallery page as just images, or keep it mixed with both. You can see my site directly HERE if you would like to see what i'm talking about exactly- the lightbox is broken, its a work in progress.
Image & Video Optimization | | JPRichardson0 -
How To: Image Transition Effect on Website
What program would allow an image transition effect where product images when viewed on our website change to alternative angles/shots of the same product when the cursor is on the image? This is a common transition effect of websites such as http://studiominc.com.au/collections/pyramids. Please let us know if you have used programs like these and how to implement this into our website. Thank you!
Image & Video Optimization | | CostumeD0 -
How much can our page title, URL and alt-tag differ without negatively affecting SEO?
We are a bridal store selling wedding dresses and bridesmaids dresses. We are wanting to know how much our URL and page title can differ, whilst still optimising SEO. For example, for the category Wedding Dresses, the URL contains wedding dresses, so can we use " the best wedding dresses in Sydney" in the page title? For the bridesmaid dresses (URL is /bridesmaiddresses/) can we use " buy best bridesmaid dresses online in Australia"? Can we use terms such as "buy best black dress in sydney", "buy online in australia" or "shop online in sydney" in the alt-tag, additional from the page title .i.e. adding extra keywords in the alt-tag that do not appear in the title? Would this be classified as keyword stuffing? In our main categories .e.g. Wedding Dresses, can we add "best wedding dress store", "buy wedding dresses from best wedding store in sydney" in the alt-tag? 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 -
Apparently now OK to use PO boxes to optimize local search?
I've always stood behind what I thought was Google's policy of not recognizing PO boxes. But it seems like all you have to do now is create one and take 2 seconds to create a low-quality G+ page. The below link is to a screenshot that shows my guy (yay new, high quality site with growing, relevant, authoritative content!) just out of the local results. He's not technically in Athens, so we knew it was an uphill battle. What's annoying though is the low-quality G+ PO box result above him. https://www.diigo.com/item/image/4bxh7/yi1x I know the PO Box result is not great in a vacuum in terms of conversion, but fact is if it's just phone numbers you're after they're at a distinct advantage, with no effort. For my client, we've indicated in G+ that he has a service area that extends into Athens. If Google is now favoring G+ results, I'm wondering if my guy should get a PO box instead? yi1x
Image & Video Optimization | | PerfectPitchConcepts0 -
Phone Numbers in Local Campaigns
Hi Mozzers, I have a both an 800 number and a local number for a local business client, with both featured on the site. Which number should I feature on the Google places, Google+ and local citations — the local number, the 800 number, or both? Any help appreciated.
Image & Video Optimization | | waynekolenchuk0 -
Using Facebook for Places page
I have been using Facebook for my website for some of my client, Previously it use to get ranked fast and I have one of my client of the very top for one of my clinets main keyword. I took another the same Nitch but in a different location, but they don't seem to be getting ranked.
Image & Video Optimization | | joeuglyhat0 -
How to Track Traffic from Google Places Pages
Hi, Is there anything I need to do in Google Analytics to setup tracking for traffic coming to a site via it's Google Places page? I can see some traffic from maps.google.com in the Traffic Sources > Referring Sites report, but it does not appear to marry up to the data reported in the Google Places dashboard. Thanks
Image & Video Optimization | | WCR0