Google understandably do not publish the precise methods used in indexing sites and subsequently ranking them for presentation in a Google search.
One thing I recently found out this week while looking at earlier sites and search results were some warnings that Google was placing on some sites that are not “mobile friendly”.
Because we have more and more mobile devices around there has been a shift over the past 4-5 years to create websites that change how they are presented to a user based on the screen size of the device they are using. These are generically called Responsive Websites.
You can simulate a mobile device by changing the width of your browser window on a computer. This website is based on a responsive template. If you reduce the width of the page you are viewing the screen layout will change. (Try it and see). As you reduce the width the sidebar will first disappear and the menu will disappear into a small icon with three lines across it.
The message I saw from Google Webmaster about the site I was reviewing was; if a Google Search was initiated from a mobile device, a website with a fixed layout (one that does not change when you reduce the screen width) will not score as highly as one that has got a responsive design.
For most of you, you are not in competition with anyone else. People will search for you using the name of your organisation and therefore will find you. So it probably does not matter. In the case I was investigating a business was set up to compete with a charity. How that happened remains a mystery. The competing website was professionally built; probably cost well over £2000, but in this case was not responsive. So there was no competitive advantage.
Anyway it is useful to be aware that how you rank in Google will be influenced by the device that is being used to search for you.