Has Page Width Anything To Do With Ranking?

A crazy observation ...

[RedBar]

My global site is a fixed-width, 1,000 px, but responsive html5 site.

For the various higher value keywords out-ranking me I notice that the minimum width is 1,200, some 1,500 and some full screen width. For one specific page one site has basically a stripped-down version of my page with less information etc. It looks nice but was evidently scraped from me BUT is much wider.

All the top 20 sites for this keyword are US companies, the product origin is India and is mostly processed in India and China, yet one has to get into the 20s to see the first "foreign" company.

If it were only one specific keyword I could simply wonder, but when I see this across several high-value keywords I have to question what is going on? I must stress that this is not only my site I see this but also several other non-US sites which deserve to be far higher than the SERPs currently shows.

Or is it simply G USA displaying USA sales companies whereas informational facts are passé and so 2000s?

[Brett_Tabke]

Width!? The only criteria on size I know of, is if the site is responsive or has a mobile version. Google has made it clear that mobile is it's way forward and they are going to tweak sites that are not mobile friendly. So when you talk width of screen, that doesn't even enter into the equation for me.

[lucy24]

I don't understand how you get “fixed width” and “responsive” into the same sentence.

[Wilburforce]

I don't understand how you get “fixed width” and “responsive” into the same sentence.

My question too.

[RedBar]

I don't understand how you get “fixed width” and “responsive” into the same sentence.

I incorporated it into my style sheet some 9 years ago, ooops, should have written maximum width !

.pagewidth { width: 100%; max-width: 1024px; }

So on desk top it displays at a maximum of 1024 yet on mobile / tablet /etc is fully responsive, it's never been an issue for me or the html5 validator or the Google mobile thingy and has always scored usually 100. When mobile testing first came out it was validated by G.

[Wilburforce]

OK. My own site is similar - max-width:900px - probably for longer than yours. I based this on line-length for readability, not ranking. My site is now at #12 (top of page 2) for main key term in my sector, and pages currently above it vary (with no particular consistency or order) from about the same as mine to full display-width. The current #1 - there fairly consistently - is 1000.

It hadn't occurred to me that width could be a factor on its own, and although it might make a difference for user-engagement, a brief glance at the top 20 positions in my own sector don't support that conclusion.

I suppose there might be sector-dependent factors: I'm not showing videos or high-resolution photos, where limiting the display-width would certainly have shortcomings.

[lucy24]

ooops, should have written maximum width

Oh yes, that makes a heck of a difference. Personally I prefer to set max-width in ems, to allow for readers with different font-size preferences, but this obviously depends on page content. And then {margin: 0 auto;} so the content isn’t scrunched way over to the left in larger viewports. (Or, ahem, way over to the right, depending on language.)