Curious to know your interpretation of Google new algorithm that affects serps in mobile searches - that is placing "mobile friendly" sites above those that are not. I heard this new change will NOT affect serps on desktop, is this true?

That's probably not 100% accurate.

 

"Starting April 21, we will be expanding our use of mobile-friendliness as a ranking signal. This change will affect mobile searches in all languages worldwide and will have a significant impact in our search results. Consequently, users will find it easier to get relevant, high quality search results that are optimized for their devices."

Article Source Google

 

Note the "our use of mobile-friendliness as a ranking signal" part - a signal, nothing more. However, the strength of the signal is not 100% known, although many are taking a guess / simulations. Here's a MOZ article http://moz.com/blog/9-things-about-googles-mobile-friendly-update which makes interesting reading.

BB - I'll have to read the article with great concentration to make sense of it. What is your interpretation of it?

 

The largest question I have at this point (not sure if anyone knows the answer for sure) is how will this change affect mobile searches (positively I hope) and how will it affect desktop searches (if at all)?

 

Observation - my site shows as "mobile friendly" in a mobile search but does not show this designation in a desktop search. Thoughts?

To say Google will stack mobile friendly first is way overestimating, it's a ranking factor. To make it as simple as possible if you had 2 identical sites, same backlink strength, keywords spread etc then yes in the mobile search results you would be given a +1 for mobile friendly. It's still uncertain how much weight this +1 will be worth compared to other ranking factors.

 

The 'mobile friendly' badge is optional, and possible it'll go to 'slow' for non mobile friendly sites, it's in the MOZ article but to take a snippet...

 

"We are also inclined to believe that the use of the new "Mobile-Friendly" designation in mobile SERPS may be temporary, as long as SEOs and webmasters feel incentivized to make their CSS and JavaScript crawlable, and get into the new mobile index. "Mobile-Friendly" in the SERP is a bit clunky, and takes up a lot of space, so Google may decide switch to something else, like the "slow" tag shown to the right, originally spotted in testing by Barry Schwartz. In fact, showing the "Slow" tag might make sense later in the game, after most webmasters have made the updates, and Google instead needs to create a more serious and impactful negative incentive for the stragglers. (This is Barry's image; we have not actually seen this one yet)."

 

A point to note is I manage a site which doesn't show mobile friendly on all pages, even though it passes the tests. Instead the little gry text is the result count of items on the page (e.g. 1 - 10 of 234 results), I think this is because the item count is technically more important in a UX perspective.

 

As for desktop placement, i'm sure it's 99.9% not going to be affected, however, speed will be the next signal after this rollout, and this would affect desktop too - but that's said whilst glancing into my crystal ball

Edited April 8, 201511 yr by BrowserBugs