So a question many folks have been thinking about in regards to the April 21st mobile-friendly Google algorithm was what if a brand is not mobile-friendly and someone searches for them after April 21st on their mobile device, will the brand still rank in the number one spot or will the mobile-friendly algorithm rank a mobile-friendly site higher, such as the brand's Wikipedia profile or something else?
John Mueller of Google said, while there will be slight ranking demotion for the brand, since the brand page is the most relevant result, it is unlikely that the brand page will not rank number one in the search results.
John said this in a Google+ handout at the 37:53 mark where I asked John:
Branded queries. Let's say home depot does not have a mobile site and someone searches for home depot on a mobile device, I assume the mobile algorithm will not impact brand related queries?
John responded:
So in general, what happens with these kind of demotions is that we try to demote the sites a little bit and what will happen with a branded query or one where we know it is very navigation is we know that this is a really really strong result and even if we demote it slightly it will still be up top. So it's something where I'd say there is no effect at all on branded queries because there is somehow magically different. It's just that these sites are often very relevant for these queries and even if they are slightly demoted then it is not going to drop them from page one or drop them, sometime snot even from the first position. So that is something where we don't treat the brand queries in any way special there, but these pages are really really relevant and sometimes even if they are demoted slightly, then there still the top result.
Here is the video:
It will be great to see if Moz, the big SEO brand, does not go mobile friendly, to see if it impacts their brand on mobile queries. Moz.com is currently not mobile friendly as you can see by going to their site on a mobile device or Googling them on a mobile device. But they are indeed working on a responsive design.
Forum discussion at Google+.
