Desktop and Mobile Rankings WTF?

[PROFRBcom]

One site we run, is not mobile friendly. It is desktop optimized and will probably stay that way. However, shockingly, it ranks higher for mobile search than for desktop search! How can this be?

I have noticed this for a while by the way, even through the mobile rankings changes, and very recently the gap has widened between mobile and desktop rankings!?



I can not for the life of me understand how a site that is not mobile optimized would rank so much better on mobile and tablets as opposed to desktop where it shines?

[ryanmarketing]

Have anything to do with your AMP pages?

[wonderpunter]

bot is a mobile crawler anyhow.. is this for all keywords or just a select few?

[PROFRBcom]

That is aggregate of all keywords on the site.

[PROFRBcom]

Have anything to do with your AMP pages?

What AMP pages lol. Does anyone actually go through the effort of making those? Again, I don't care about mobile... desktop is where the money is at for our audience. Our audience does not use phones to play poker, and even when they do, it's worth far less money than a desktop user. Hence why we don't care.

I am open to being convinced though... why would AMP even be useful?

[tpivesgarcia]

One site we run, is not mobile friendly. It is desktop optimized and will probably stay that way. However, shockingly, it ranks higher for mobile search than for desktop search! How can this be?

I have noticed this for a while by the way, even through the mobile rankings changes, and very recently the gap has widened between mobile and desktop rankings!?



I can not for the life of me understand how a site that is not mobile optimized would rank so much better on mobile and tablets as opposed to desktop where it shines?

If that data is came from google search console, google does not tell wether your website is mobile optimized or not. That rank or ave. position you we're saying is base on the number of search queries show in mobile search results that queries is able to show your website.

You can refer to our stats also:

Ave. Position by Devices base on the Search Queries

[seoheroes]

google moved to mobile first index ....

[PROFRBcom]

google moved to mobile first index ....

I am aware of that and mentioned it in the OP. All that means however is that the mobile algo is the major factor in determining what your rankings will be rather than the old desktop algo. However, I would assume that given they still report both Desktop and Mobile rankings separately, that they are still different for different users...

^^ Anyone disagree with this? Am I looking at this the wrong way?

[Sherlock]

The other sites are maybe even worse for mobiles than your site. Or rather Google is just stupid/random (looking at seo results is like Jews looking for the reason of holocaust and why some survived).

[PROFRBcom]

My top KW are very different for mobile and desktop searches. Regardless of Google having moved to "mobile first indexing" and "mobile crawler" it is giving different rankings in the SERPS to different KW on different devices.

And why a 95% unoptimized mobile site ranks significantly better in mobile search than desktop is a ******* mystery to me!