Mobile search - through the keyhole

Especially in South Africa, where mobile phone users are nearing 36 million, compared to five million Internet users. With the dire state of broadband in SA, the reality is that currently 11% of active Internet users access the web from their mobile.

In addition, these ready eyeballs provide an attractive new channel for advertisers and companies to provide rich applications, multimedia and other interactive ways of extending their brand.

Google working hard

Around the world the search greats are recognising this. Google is working hard to position itself as the de facto search engine on the mobile phone as well on the Internet. It recently upgraded its mobile search from beta status to a fully functioning search engine. Its mobile blog (http://googlemobile.blogspot.com/) is a hub of activity, with ongoing updates from Google staffers. New mobile services include Gmail, YouTube and Google Maps for mobiles, and the ability to sync the Blackberry calendar with Google.

The company is also anticipating the growth it needs to do in order to remain scalable. It currently indexes something like 170 billion “standard” documents on the Internet. Google's mobile index is no doubt at present much smaller than this, but it looks like it is anticipating significant growth.

Although in a way this may appear to be a chicken and egg situation, website owners should be watching this situation very closely. Especially in SA, with its high number of mobile Internet users. The vast majority of users will use Google to find what they are looking for online, even when using their mobile phones.

But it's not good enough to rely on classic search engine optimisation to ensure success in a mobile environment.

People search differently

Firstly, people search differently on a mobile phone. They are generally looking for an answer to a specific question, such as “What time does the rugby start this afternoon?” Or location specific information, such as “Where is the nearest pub showing the rugby this afternoon?” Also, people expect an answer to their question in a much shorter time.

But others may use their mobile phone as their primary, or only, way of engaging with the Internet. This makes the mobile phone the only way you are going to reach these customers digitally.

I suspect the first example is going to be a trend around the world, with the second being a trait of countries like SA, where many people use their mobile phone as their primary connection to the Internet. So, for instance, an 18-year-old in London will want to know when the next train to Waterloo leaves, while an 18-year-old in Cape Town will want to know what time the next bus to the Waterfront is, as well as use their mobile phone as their primary way of interacting with Facebook. This is not a hard-and-fast rule though, more an emphasis and something that web site owners need to factor in to a greater extent in SA.

Two options

When searching via Google on your mobile phone, you will have access to over eight billion web pages and over two billion images. There are currently two options to choose from when using Google search on your mobile phone. The first delivers typical web results, identical to a search result on your computer. The second option restricts your results to only .mobi sites.

This is incredibly scary if you don't have a .mobi site, but incredibly good news if you do. If people start opting for this option of the search because the web pages that are delivered are built for a handheld device, and not a full-blown website, and therefore easier to use, you will miss out on an entire audience if you don't play in this space.

So what do companies need to do to gear up for this new trend?

Companies need to differentiate their mobile strategy from their online strategy. Simply having a single website to service both channels is not enough and brands will lose out by not being included in the .mobi results.

Crucial to optimise

Once you have a .mobi website, it is still crucial to go through the exercise of optimising this site for Google search. In the same way that companies optimise their websites using SEO tactics, they now need to start looking to the future and preparing their websites to display correctly on mobile handsets.

Some important criteria to bear in mind are:

1. Use 100% valid XHTML 1.0 code
   
2. Follow accessibility best practices
   
3. Make sure your site is compliant to the Mobi consortium guidelines, using the http://ready.mobi tool.
   
4. Create a special mobile sitemap and submit it to Google using Google webmaster's tools.
   

Once these steps are complete, you should consider talking to a SEO agency with experience in optimising mobile sites. They should be able to advise you on the type of campaign your site will require. Done right, and your customers won't be peering at your site through a keyhole. Instead you will be interacting with your audience, delivering content and brand information, on the same side of the door that they are standing on.