What's better: a mobile or adaptive layout?

Mobile website layout is becoming more and more popular. Primarily it’s associated with the launch of new tools for page ranking from Yandex and Google. Currently mobile search results won’t include websites without mobile version. We wanted to analyze what is better for webmasters – a mobile or adaptive layout.

It should be reminded, that recently Yandex has announced the launch of a new mobile page ranking formula Vladivostok, which will give preference to websites with mobile version. That’s why many webmasters have a quite reasonable question to ask: will a website with adaptive layout be ranked in the same way as with mobile layout?

Press Service of Yandex has answered this question: “Vladivostok makes allowance for any kind of mobile website optimization – whether that is a mobile version with a different URL, or adaptive web design, or dynamic layout”. This suggests that adaptive and mobile websites will be ranked in the same way.

Some experts in this field have also noted that a mobile version represents a restricted copy of fully functional website. In order to make a website more convenient to use and read, it’s better to use adaptive layout. Such websites have the same URL, so it will be easier for users to browse them and share with friends.