Discrepancy between desktop ranking and mobile ranking

Selected answers from the Dumb SEO Questions Facebook & G+ community.

• 
  Brenda Michelin: Google is smarter than hell is the short answer.
  Longer answer is that mobile search results are based on:
  the location of the mobile phone
  the direction of movement, if the person is moving,
  the general intent of the searcher, based on their history.
  The way people search on mobile is very different, even voice-driven
  Places (local results) generally will appear higher on mobile.
  
  Desktop/mobile search results will always be different. Ultimately, Google is trying to give the best results for individual users, and as such, we can expect these variances.
• 
  Neil Cheesman: All of the above I understand... I just don`t quite understand why the same url can rank differently for two different search terms... IF the SERPS are correct in GSC...
• 
  Brenda Michelin: Easy, on-page signals for each specific term.
• 
  Neil Cheesman: Yes - it is just quirky that for the same page Desktop v Mobile 7/7 and 7/15 on the same url... clearly I need to look harder to see if I can find the factors... I think they are likely to be location based factors as I cannot replicate the SERPS for Mobile...
• 
  David Gizzarelli: Brenda Michelin Does Google know where I’m traveling as a representative of a business? It seems like if Im out of town, my leads fall, but when I get back into my location, I start getting leads again.
• 
  Richard Hearne: Pages which Google classifies as good for mobile vs. desktop will vary, so your competition between devices wont be from the same result set. That`s just 1 possible reason for this. Another would be user intent, which may vary between the 2 different articles and across devices. Might be irrelevant, but also possible.
• 
  Neil Cheesman: Thanks for feedback.. to reiterate - this is the exact same page with the exact same content - just that Google is choosing to rank the page for two different (there are many more) search terms... for 1 search term rankings on mobile and desktop are virtually the same but for 2 search term they are quite different. Not sure where I can grab any analytics to see where the `visitors are from... This is a venue an d I am not based anywhere near it and my searches both reveal the same rankings for mobile and desktop.