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Comment by Udik | Hacker News Reader

What I don't get is this. Isn't Google supposed to rank websites based on the predicted relevance of the result for the user's query? And what would the (supposed, as it is clear from many comments) mobile friendliness have to do with this?

Would a website that contains less reliable information, or more confused content, or that is less popular among the users themselves, be ranked higher than a better one just because it scales down nicely on a small screen?

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Google ranks websites using hundred of signals with different weights. I bet a more relevant website is always going to trump less relevant ones, regardless of how mobile friendly they are.

But if a more relevant website is always going to trump a less relevant one (where for relevant I mean: contains the answer to the question the user has submitted) - then what is the effect of bumping mobile friendly websites? None, it would seem - unless there were two websites perfectly identical in every respect except for mobile friendliness, a case that must be pretty rare.

If A and B are identical in all aspects except for mobile-friendliness (A > B), most users are going to like A better than B, given that information is laid out in a more easily consumable format on mobile [1].

User satisfaction not only depends on getting a relevant answer, but also how an answer is presented. Their degree of importance is where the weights come in.

[1] Otherwise, why would anyone build mobile-friendly websites in the first place?

My reading is that this will affect searching on mobile devices. It would seem relevant to bump up results that will actually deal well with said mobile user accessing them.

>It would seem relevant to bump up results that will actually deal well with said mobile user accessing them

If you need to "bump them up" it means their ranking is lower - that is, they're (supposed to be) less relevant. It's arguable it's a good service for the user.

> It's arguable it's a good service for the user.

Does the user want to click on a link to a relevant site that their device cannot adequately access?

But serving me mobile content is now giving me a worse experience.

I get a site that's less relevant, and I have to fight against an unintuitive UI and disabled zoom amd fixed banners and all the other weird stupid things people do to mobile sites.

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