Will Google Also Penalize Desktop Rankings If Your Site is Not Mobile Friendly?
-
Apologies if this question has already been answered. I was unable to find it. For desktop organic rankings: Will Google take into consideration mobile-readiness as a ranking factor?
Thanks in advance for any reply,
Kind regards,
Eric Darby -
Hi Eric,
You've received some great responses here! All are spot-on (as far as one can be answering this question at this time, that is.) You may also be interested to know that Dr. Pete has answered this question here in the forum at http://moz.com/community/q/google-s-mobile-update-what-we-know-so-far-updated-3-25. He actually posted a Q&A of common questions about the mobile update, taking new questions in the discussion thread, and updating the original Q&A post as new information becomes available.
Christy
-
I would work on the assumption that it will affect the rankings on desktop too and if you have time to make your site responsive in time then I would - it covers all bases then.
Also, as mobile searches are increasing it makes sense to go responsive as soon as you can.
-
I think that is the big unknown at this point. All we know so far is what Google has said “This change will affect mobile searches in all languages worldwide and will have a significant impact in our search results.”
The first part references it’s affect on mobile searches and then goes on to state “AND will have a significant impact on our search results”
Google doesn't have a separate index for mobile so that leads me to lean toward thinking that it will affect all searches desktop and mobile, however that is not to say that Google could simply filter mobile searches and have this only affect mobile. They are working on a mobile index however, so who is to say that won't be launched at the same time as this new update.
The fact that they have released so much information ahead of time means the update is probably going to be a huge one. In my opinion, unless the mobile index is launched at the same time, then there is no way this change won't affect desktop rankings.
-
The best answer we can give before the change is "not intentionally." It seems they intend to affect mobile rankings but some residual effect may trickle across to desktop rankings.
Just as an example, let's say pageviews were a ranking factor (I doubt they are directly one, but it's easy to visualise.)
Your mobile ranking drops as a result of not having a mobile friendly site. By your traffic dropping, your desktop numbers are no longer as good and boom, you drop as well.
It's not that straightforward (and again, pageviews are not necessarily a ranking factor) but that is the way it could trickle across. So for now, I'd say "We don't expect it to but it's possible."
-
Hi Eric,
There are some similar questions regarding the topic on the forum (unfortunately the search function Moz is not really best in class) - check also these questions:
http://moz.com/community/q/google-s-mobile-friendly-update-how-significant-is-the-impact-for-us
http://moz.com/community/q/google-mobile-algorithm-updateBasically, nobody knows what the effect is going to be. Most of the stuff I read about it seem to indicate that there will be no impact for desktop, but again we don't know. Google seems to indicate that it will have a big impact, so if you have a lot of mobile traffic, you risk to loose a lot.
The mobile friendly check is done is on page not site level - so you could try to work on your most important (mobile) landing pages and make them responsive / adapted for mobile. It doesn't really have to be state of the art - the goal is that the page passes the mobile friendly test - you can always improve later on.
rgds
Dirk
-
Hi Eric
It sounds like Google will only affect websites only on Google's mobile listings. So rankings on the desktop version of Google should be unaffected. They are doing this purely from a user experience perspective and are devaluing sites that aren't mobile ready for users on a mobile device,.
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
-
Google webmaster is not crawling links and site cache still in old date
Hi guys, I have been trying to get my page indexed in Google with new title and descriptions but it is not getting indexed. I have checked in many tools but no useful. Can you please tell me what could be the issue? Even I have set up And Google webmaster is not crawling links I have built so far. Few links are indexed but others do not. Why this is happening. My url is: https://www.paydaysunny.com thanks
Technical SEO | | ksmith880 -
Google Search Console Site Map Anomalies (HTTP vs HTTPS)
Hi I've just done my usual Monday morning review of clients Google Search Console (previously Webmaster Tools) dashboard and disturbed to see that for 1 client the Site Map section is reporting 95 pages submitted yet only 2 indexed (last time i looked last week it was reporting an expected level of indexed pages) here. It says the sitemap was submitted on the 10th March and processed yesterday. However in the 'Index Status' its showing a graph of growing indexed pages up to & including yesterday where they numbered 112 (so looks like all pages are indexed after all). Also the 'Crawl Stats' section is showing 186 pages crawled on the 26th. Then its listing sub site-maps all of which are non HTTPS (http) which seems very strange since the site is HTTPS and has been for a few months now and the main sitemap index url is an HTTPS: https://www.domain.com/sitemap_index.xml The sub sitemaps are:http://www.domain.com/marketing-sitemap.xmlhttp://www.domain.com/page-sitemap.xmlhttp://www.domain.com/post-sitemap.xmlThere are no 'Sitemap Errors' reported but there are 'Index Error' warnings for the above post-sitemap, copied below:_"When we tested a sample of the URLs from your Sitemap, we found that some of the URLs were unreachable. Please check your webserver for possible misconfiguration, as these errors may be caused by a server error (such as a 5xx error) or a network error between Googlebot and your server. All reachable URLs will still be submitted." _
Technical SEO | | Dan-Lawrence
Also for the below site map URL's: "Some URLs listed in this Sitemap have a high response time. This may indicate a problem with your server or with the content of the page" for:http://domain.com/en/post-sitemap.xmlANDhttps://www.domain.com/page-sitemap.xmlAND https://www.domain.com/post-sitemap.xmlI take it from all the above that the HTTPS sitemap is mainly fine and despite the reported 0 pages indexed in GSC sitemap section that they are in fact indexed as per the main 'Index Status' graph and that somehow some HTTP sitemap elements have been accidentally attached to the main HTTPS sitemap and the are causing these problems.What's best way forward to clean up this mess ? Resubmitting the HTTPS site map sounds like right option but seeing as the master url indexed is an https url cant see it making any difference until the http aspects are deleted/removed but how do you do that or even check that's what's needed ? Or should Google just sort this out eventually ? I see the graph in 'Crawl > Sitemaps > WebPages' is showing a consistent blue line of submitted pages but the red line of indexed pages drops to 0 for 3 - 5 days every 5 days or so. So fully indexed pages being reported for 5 day stretches then zero for a few days then indexed for another 5 days and so on ! ? Many ThanksDan0 -
Removed Subdomain Sites Still in Google Index
Hey guys, I've got kind of a strange situation going on and I can't seem to find it addressed anywhere. I have a site that at one point had several development sites set up at subdomains. Those sites have since launched on their own domains, but the subdomain sites are still showing up in the Google index. However, if you look at the cached version of pages on these non-existent subdomains, it lists the NEW url, not the dev one in the little blurb that says "This is Google's cached version of www.correcturl.com." Clearly Google recognizes that the content resides at the new location, so how come the old pages are still in the index? Attempting to visit one of them gives a "Server Not Found" error, so they are definitely gone. This is happening to a couple of sites, one that was launched over a year ago so it doesn't appear to be a "wait and see" solution. Any suggestions would be a huge help. Thanks!!
Technical SEO | | SarahLK0 -
Will a google map loaded "on scroll" be ignored by the crawler?
One of my pages has two Google maps on it. This leads to a fairly high keyword density for words like "data", "map data" etc. Since one of the maps is basically at the bottom of the page I thought of loading it "on scroll" as soon as its container becomes visible (before loading the map div should be empty). Will the map then still be craweld by google (can they execute the JS in a way that the map is loaded anyways?) or would this help to reduce the keywords introduced by the maps?
Technical SEO | | ddspg0 -
What can i do to stop my site from dropping in the rankings
Hi, we were number one in google for the keyword lifestyle magazine but now our magazine website www.in2town.co.uk is doing very bad in the rankings. One week ago we were around 8 then we went to 12 and now we are on the third page and i am not sure what is happening. We wanted and needed our home page to rank for the keywords of lifestyle magazine, lifestyle news but none of these keywords are doing very well with google can anyone please point me in the right direction so i can stop my site falling any further I am not sure if the home page is properly optimized but i have never had trouble with it before many thanks
Technical SEO | | ClaireH-1848860 -
When to 301 a No1 ranking site to the new domain?
I have a site [company.com] that ranks number one for the products of my brand but I'm moving all the efforts to a dedicated brand domain. The old site covered a number of small brands and we had no dedicated brand sites, but we now focus on just this one brand and it doesn't belong on the old company domain name. BRAND belongs on the new brand.com Because of the age of the old company site and because it had the first copy about the brand, it's still ranking well for the brand product names, and the new site has some duplicate content issues that I'm in the throws of resolving. RANKS Company.com : number one for all product names Brand.com : nowhere for product brand names but top for the brand name (as I say, the product pages on this site have duplicate content issues which is likely keeping them ranked low - Hades low. I would rather not maintain two websites and I want to give brand.com every bit of available oomph , so should I at some point 301 the old company site to the new one? If so, is now the time? Thanks
Technical SEO | | Brocberry0 -
Will a drop in indexed pages significantly affect Google rankings?
I am doing some research into why we were bumped from Google's first page into the 3rd, fourth and fifth pages in June of 2010. I always suspected Caffeine, but I just came across some data that indicates a drop in indexed pages from 510 in January of that year to 133 by June. I'm not sure what happened but I believe our blog pages were de-indexed somehow. What I want to know is could that significant drop in indexed pages have had an effect on our rankings at that time? We are back up to over 500 indexed pages, but have not fully recovered our first page positions.
Technical SEO | | rdreich490 -
My site went from #3 to #2 to #1 to #10 in Google.nl
I have a site which has been #3 in Google.nl for a certain long tail phrase for pretty long. After I optimized my site some more for this specific phrase I went to #2 and eventually some weeks later to #1. But when I finally became #1, the celebration was short, as two weeks thereafter I dropped to #10 where I have been stuck for several weeks now... Can this be some sort of over optimization penalty? I personally don't think so as I hardly created links with the anchor, or a variation of it. On page also seems pretty much in order to me. Also, the site is on a exact match domain and used to rank for it, but doesn't even rank in the top #100 anymore. Any advice? PS: I rather don't publish the URL, but if anyone can help out I have no problem sending it in a private message, including the phrase in question.
Technical SEO | | VisualSense0