SEO results by device

Ever notice that when you search for something on your phone vs searching for the same thing on your desktop yield differing results?  Why does this happen?  Why am I on page 1 on my iPhone, but page 12 on my desktop?

Well there are multiple factors going on lets factor out the most common.

1 – Your Search History on both devices.   You most likely want to clear your cache, logout, clear your cache again on both devices.   Because your search history influences the results you see.

2 – Location services modify the results as well,  your Smartphone pushes out your exact GPS location to Google, and Google then displays the local pizza shops at your location.   However on your desktop these location services are not as accurate.   Meaning that your desktop is reporting  you are located in center city Allentown, Pa while your smart phone is stating the more accurate location that you are on I-78 West near Macungie, Pa.   So the pizza shops you are getting on your desktop are not the same that your Smartphone is.

3 – Mobile friendliness counts.   A website that doesn’t have a responsive design tends to get penalized in Google, whereas a website that renders properly on a smartphone tends to get a boost in the rankings.

4 – The type of search matters.  Some searches spawn news results whereas others spawn images,  and others spawn related information such as wikipedia results displayed directly on the results page.    Some of these features do not display on some devices due to screen size.

Now thinking about each of these factors (there are actually many more) , applied directly  to each single result in aggregate mean that the results can be wildly different even though you are physically at the exact same location doing the exact same search.

SEO used to be easy.