Mobile Search Sites, Part 1
January 22nd, 2007 MobileFreak
In case you haven’t noticed, there are several mobile search sites available today for your cell phone or mobile device. Of course, the search giants from the desktop, Google, Yahoo, Ask, AOL, and MSN, all provide search services from the mobile platform. Newer mobile search firms also offer impressive results, and their singular focus on the mobile platform is starting to show through with impressive results and useful features. Today, we will focus on the one of Google’s mobile search services, and will discuss other mobile search tools in future articles.
When you are talking search, it’s difficult not to start with Google. Google offers two local search services — Google XHTML and Google WML. The XHTML version offers four search options: Web, Images, Local Listings, and Mobile Web. The Web option provides results from across the Web, and while many of those sites do not render well on a mobile screen, Google does a decent job of attempting to make that experience relatively smooth. As you might guess, Google XHTML’s Images option returns thumbnail images from around the Web, and the Local option offers a mobile version of the Google Local search you may have used from your desktop browser. Finally, the Mobile Web option returns sites from around the, well, the mobile Web.
If there’s one concept Google clearly gets about the mobile Web (okay, there might be more than one), it’s the limited screen size. Google XHTML recognizes menu items on a web page and collapses them by default, which often allows you to see the main content of the page without scrolling (or at least with less scrolling). In yet another effort to save space, Google will only send a maximum of 10Kb of a web page at a time, breaking up large pages into multiple mobile pages. It adds Next and Previous navigation links at the bottom, as well as the current page number out of the total number of pages returned.
Of course, Google XHTML is not without it’s faults. For some reason, they still do not automatically resize images, meaning even large images are displayed on your cell phone. It is only after that page has loaded that Google allows you to resize the images. Another issue I have, and it’s almost a nit, but when I’m browsing on my cell phone, why does it not default to the Mobile Web option? I am sure this question has been discussed at the Google Plex, and perhaps it was decided to wait until the mobile Web has a bit more to offer. Well, it’s time.
Entry Filed under: Tools
Here are a few related posts:
Survey: Mobile Web Search
Mobile Web Post of the Week
Yahoo Go vs Yahoo Mobile, Explained
Essential Mobile Websites For Newbies
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