The screen capture to the right is the result of a non-geo specific search on a phone.
As you can see, the mobile results are very similar to the desktop results. From all our testing and research, it’s apparent that Google is focused on delivering local results on any device.
Because it's estimated that mobile searches will increase to 75% in 2017, we're optimizing for local search. Ranking factors to consider include:
Google My Business signals (proximity, categories, keyword in business title, etc.)
- Citation signals (NAP consistency [name, address, phone number], citation volume, etc.)
- On-page signals (presence of NAP, keywords in titles, domain authority, etc.)
- Link signals (inbound anchor text, linking domain authority, linking domain quantity, etc.)
- Review signals (review quantity, velocity, and diversity, etc.)
- Social signals (Google, Facebook, Twitter, and other social channels)
- Behavioral/mobile signals (click-through rate, mobile clicks-to-call, check-ins, etc.)
- Personalized search
- Optimizing for page speed and usability
If you don't have a separate mobile version of your website, there's no need to worry. Google will use the desktop version of your site for ranking. However, your website must be responsive in design (mobile-friendly). Mobile-friendly is all about delivering a good user experience.
Google is and will continue to experiment over the coming months and say they will “ramp up this change when they're confident they can deliver a great user experience.”