Why are mobile search results different?
Just a quick success story here to keep us 'WA-rriors' motivated :-)
I woke up this morning having published only 13 hours previously. With bleary eyes I did a quick search on my mobile and there is my post ranked at #3 in Google [happy dance]. Checked on desktop and the post is nowhere to be seen. So why are mobile search results different?
I was fascinated so I did a bit of digging around and now I know a little about Google’s mobile-first indexing shenanigans. It’s probably old news to you veterans here seeing as Google rolled this out in March 2021, although I think there was a bit of a delay.
Anyway, it seems Google now sends out the mobile crawler first, before the traditional desktop crawler. I’m thinking this explains why my page has appeared in the mobile results first.
As always, if anyone here knows differently, please enlighten me!
There’s some good info here on the SearchMetrics blog with tips to improve your site’s performance on mobile - pretty important in today’s mobile world!
I’m hoping this SERP position is indicative of where I will also rank on desktop. We’ll see!
During my electronic travels I also discovered a way to view your mobile SERP using a desktop device … if you’re using the Chrome browser:
- Search your keyword in an incognito window - this is the desktop SERP.
- CTRL + T for a new tab and search the keyword again.
- Right click anywhere in the blank space and click ‘Inspect’
- You will see the code appear on the right hand side of the page.
- In the top left of the code window you will see a little mobile icon.
- Click that and refresh the page (you may need to refresh 2 or 3 times).
- You will now see the mobile SERP.
- Change the device to your preference at the top of the page!
Pretty cool huh?
Using this technique you can easily compare your mobile SERP with the desktop version by switching tabs.
Lo and behold, it shows exactly the same results as I see on my mobile device and they’re slightly different to the desktop results.
Hope that helps someone today :-)
Have a productive day my WA family! Keep on keeping on.
Rohan.
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Recent Comments
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This has happend to me but my search engine for my phone is Google. And my search engine for my computer is Bing.
Because it's Microsoft. When I had people go check out my site. I asked them to look it up on Google. Because that's where it was. Unless I gave them a direct link then it would skip you having to go to Google.
Just like now. I can still get on computer type in search my website and still it's not on Bing yet.but all of my articles have been indexed on Google. But if you go here tastywayscom.com it's a direct link and you don't need to search for it. Thanks I thought I was the only one this happend to. Dennis
Hi Dennis, you should be able to change your default search engine on any device. It'll be an option in the settings somewhere.
What I noticed this morning is the results are different on the same search engine (Google) depending on whether you use a mobile device or a desktop machine.
I should also clarify what I stated above, in that I think Google are now using the mobile crawler exclusively ... at least according to the Search Metrics blog I linked to.
Cheers! Rohan.
Ok I'm still learning my new computer or laptop. It was built on Microsoft and when I didn't want my Gmail to be my main email it had a fit. Lol but I just go to Google app and look there Microsoft edge is picky.
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An excellent informative post here, Rohan! Thank you!
Jeff
Hey Jeff, you're welcome. The pleasure is all mine :-)
Hope you're good today!
Thank you, Rohan! So far, so Good today!
Jeff