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
-
Local Search Clean up Done. Now Best Way to Index?
I have spent hours doing some local search clean up and have a list of all the URLs to index, about 75. Is there a place I can dump these to get them all indexed quickly or do I have to wait for the hand of Google to come down and bless me with indexing. I don't want to dump all these to Google +, Facebook, or Twitter; that would just be wrong. Any ideas for fast indexing. I want them to all get indexed before the business address changes in a couple years 🙂
Image & Video Optimization | | photoseo10 -
Is it considered duplicate contentnt to post a video to youtube then embed that video on our website's FAQs page?
Essentially, I am answering popular questions we are asked and answering them in a video. Once I post it on youtube, I take the video, add it to our FAQ page, and when someone clicks on the question, a new page opens with the question, the video, and the written answer to the question underneath it. Thanks for any advice. watch?v=bwGRmvnCn7w
Image & Video Optimization | | KempRugeLawGroup0 -
Google+ Places Page Showing Wrong Information
Hi There, I have a client who's runs three nuseries (pre schools) A, B and C and has three differen googe+ pages all with different addresses so no problem there. However I noticed that if I clicked on on of them in the Google places account settings listing A would show the details of listing B and not it's own. Thinking this was a glitch I deleted listing A and was about to set up another one. I entered the phone number and it brought up the details to the listing B as sharing the same phone number. Is this is what's causing the issue? Can businesses share the same phone number in the same locality and have two different listings, despite having two different addresses? Kind Regards Neil
Image & Video Optimization | | jmaycock0 -
New website & the dreaded drop in rank & queries.
It's been 18 days since I launched my new website, how should I wait be fore I start to worry. Is it natural for this kind of drop, should I go back to my original splash page?
Image & Video Optimization | | KristopherWho0 -
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 -
Do I need incoming links to my mobile site, if I want to rank for mobile search?
Does a mobile site need backlinks to rank? Or are onsite factors the one and only here? And what are the most important "onsite" factors for mobile seo?
Image & Video Optimization | | jameda0 -
Multi-site listings in Google Local/Place pages
I've had problems with a client that is a local medical center with multiple sites/addresses. We've created a Place Page for each location and linked it to the location page on the client's website that matches the address on the Place page. But that means we're not linking to the medical center's home page -- and Google Places doesn't like that. I know this because after we'd owner-verified each Place Page, Google went in and just changed the website link that was a deep link to a location page and replaced it with a link to the home page. But now there's not an address match. How should we handle this? Related question: Does it make sense to claim a separate listing in Yelp and other local directories for each of the separate locations since they each have a unique address? Will Yelp & other local directories allow for links to non-home pages on the client's website?
Image & Video Optimization | | DenisL0 -
Ranking Penalty in Google Places for Primary Cell Phone Number?
Say a business runs out of a home (so, technically, the address of the business has a land line). But the business owner works outdoors all day long and so really runs his business off his cell phone. Is it OK in Google Places to list the mobile phone as the primary contant number, and list the home phone as a secondary number? Or will Google penalize the business's ranking in local search results for using a cell number as the main number?
Image & Video Optimization | | keethgee0