There has been a lot of confusion – and some conspiracy theories – about whether the new mobile ranking signal would have any impact or bearing on desktop search results.  Google has reiterated what they have said previously – Google’s upcoming mobile ranking signal, which comes into play on April 21st, will not have any impact on the desktop search whatsoever.

Despite many SEOs and webmasters feeling that this new mobile ranking signal will somehow come into play on the desktop search results – including many discussions on both Twitter and Facebook – Google has once again confirmed that the new ranking signal affects mobile searches only and it will not be applied to desktop searches… and because they commented on it.

This is going to affect mobile search results.  It’s not going to affect desktop searches.  So this means that when you take out your phone you do a mobile search,  all those search results are going to be affected.  So mobile friendly sites are going to be shown more prominently, and consequently, sites that are not mobile friendly are going to be lower in the search results because of that.

This does not affect desktop search results,

This was in part of the Google Mobile Hangouts Tuesday as a common question, so clearly many people are asking about this or are confused about it.

Later, they also state that desktop and mobile search results will be quite different, but they hope the mobile ranking change will result in more people making their sites mobile friendly.  And then they answered it a few more times throughout the hangout… so no, mobile ranking signal does not affect desktop searches 🙂