I’m not seeing a big change in results. Are you?
Last month I eagerly looked forward to April 21. This was the day, Google told us, that it would start favoring mobile-friendly content in search results. It would have a “significant impact” on search results.
Has this had an effect on your mobile-friendly site? I can’t find much (if any) of a change on Domain Name Wire and in general searches.
Google said it might take a few weeks for the results to be seen. It’s been a few weeks, and I haven’t seen them.
Now, I won’t let hubris suggest that Domain Name Wire is some big site that should have seen a huge jump. But I’m perplexed as to why searches on my mobile browser match those on my desktop and include lots of sites that aren’t adaptable for mobile browsers.
I’ve closely monitored searches for “Domain Name News” on my iPhone. Shortly after the mobile deadline, there was some jumping around between the top four results. Now they’re back to where they were:
1. DomainNameNews.com
2. DomainNews.com
3. DNJournal.com
4. DomainNameWire.com
The top three aren’t mobile-friendly, according to the mobile tag in search results. Yet all three continue to outrank all of the mobile-friendly domain name news sites, and the results exactly match desktop search. (I’m using a logged out desktop browser, but my phone searches have data on who I am.)
This particular result shows Google’s strong reliance on either the domain name or the title tag.
Google Webmaster Tools has a handy chart showing your mobile traffic before and after the change. Here’s mine:
The vertical line to the left represents the date change. Nothing noticeable for my site.
I looked at a few of the more common search terms for my site, as well as some more general terms. The results on mobile browsers are essentially the same as desktop, despite many of the sites not being mobile friendly.
Perhaps someone with more data and before/after rankings can chime in. But it seems that the boost mobile sites get in mobile search isn’t as consequential as many had expected. At least not yet.
Matt says
Google operates a bit like the Federal Reserve. Their public pronouncements don’t always align with their secretive actions, but they’re so powerful that sometimes just saying it’s so is enough to create the reality they want.
CW says
Never do searches on my mobile. Local WiFi and bandwidth is too slow. CW
RayJ says
My problem is I want to see the whole URL or at least the domain name and the extension.
If I search for games and the top site is let’s say Game Center, is that gamecenter.com. net org etc. Is it a totally different URL from the name.. Something like, gamingcenter.com or gamescenter.com and son forth.
Removing that option is much more important to me from an end user perspective.
As far as your query status, sounds like Google for you. Hiding things.. What they do best.
ty says
Thing is google is now a domain registrar, and they arent fortunate to have the top 4 or 5 tlds, so they arekind of cheating the “people”and other registrars as they jockey to become respectable as a registrar company