Google: Responsive Design Doesn't Give You A Ranking Boost

Oct 18, 2013 - 8:29 am 23 by

Responsive Web Design & GoogleGoogle's John Mueller posted in a Stack Exchange thread that responsive design doesn't give you a ranking boost.

Yes, Google does officially recommend responsive as the approach to going mobile. But going responsive, doesn't give you more of a ranking boost that using any of the three accepted approaches to smartphone optimized sites.

Google does demote non-mobile friendly smartphone sites from ranking so well on mobile. And if you mess up with the techniques, they can hurt.

But responsive over different HTML with same URL, doesn't necessarily give you a ranking boost.

Google's John Mueller said:

No. Google currently doesn't differentiate sites like that.

You may see indirect effects (smartphone users liking your responsive site and recommending it to others), but we don't use that as a ranking factor. We are starting to use common configuration errors to adjust the rankings in smartphone search results though.

Forum discussion at Stack Exchange.

 

Popular Categories

The Pulse of the search community

Follow

Search Video Recaps

 
Google Core Update Flux, AdSense Ad Intent, California Link Tax & More - YouTube
Video Details More Videos Subscribe to Videos

Most Recent Articles

Search Video Recaps

Search News Buzz Video Recap: Google Core Update Flux, AdSense Ad Intent, California Link Tax & More

Apr 19, 2024 - 8:01 am
Google Ads

Google Tests More Google Ad Card Formats

Apr 19, 2024 - 7:51 am
Google Search Engine Optimization

Google: It's Unlikely Your Rankings Dropped Because You Have Two Websites

Apr 19, 2024 - 7:41 am
Google Search Engine Optimization

Google: Indexing API May Work For Unsupported Content But...

Apr 19, 2024 - 7:31 am
Google Search Engine Optimization

Google: Are Hyphenated Domains Bad For Google Rankings?

Apr 19, 2024 - 7:21 am
Bing Search

Bingbot To Test Zstd Compression After Fully Gaining Full Brotli Compression

Apr 19, 2024 - 7:11 am
Previous Story: Google: Stop Using Fake Google+ Profiles To Trick Users