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Mobilizing Mobile-Ready Sites
March 14th, 2006 by Jason ColemanWe’ve been asked now a couple of time this one question (paraphrased): “Aren’t you supporting Google in their quest to be the “judge and jury” of mobile content?” What people are referring to is the fact that when you open a page using Google Mobile, Google will “mobilize” the site even if that site is already mobile-ready. This is bad for some sites because ads or other important content can be stripped out.
We had the following in our FAQ for a brief time today, but in spirit of not putting infrequently asked questions in a FAQ, we’ve decided that the blog is a better place for this discussion.
How did we get here?
Russell Buckley has written an article over at MobHappy taking issue with how Google is re-purposing pages and asking for the search giant to cooperate more with content providers. Scott Rafer is also speaking out against Google Mobile and (by association) Mobilicio.us in this article on his blog.
Here’s our take: It’s obvious to us that applications like Google Mobile are an interim solution which can be useful until a site’s publisher manages to create a mobile-friendly version of their content. Often times, the alternative to viewing the mobilized version of a made-for-monitor website on your phone is to endure grueling download times and fees (if you’re able to view the site at all). If your advertisements are targeting mobile phone users, you should have a mobile-ready version of your site available. Of course, Google doesn’t yet have the best mechanism for detecting mobile sites. What’s a webmaster to do?
There is a way to avoid Google Mobile’s conversion on your site. Sites which wish to be excluded from Google Mobile’s re-rendering can send a “removal request” by email to mobile-support@google.com. This exclusion list doesn’t seem like a good permanent solution though. What’s needed is a standard to immediately identify a website for mobile content.
Edit: Some people have responded saying that their pages are still being transcoded even after contacting Google. We’ve had proof now that contacting Google will opt-out your site from their transcoding, but it may take longer than the 24 hours they state in the FAQ.
This discussion touches upon larger issues about user (and device/application) rights vs. publishers rights. For us at least, we’ve realized that there may be times when you wish to view the un-converted version of a site through Mobilicio.us. For this reason, we are looking for an elegant solution to opting out of using the Google Mobile conversion when accessing a site in your links. In addition, just as we are looking into including other bookmarking sites and databases besides del.icio.us, we hope to be able to offer mobilization options other than Google Mobile.
| March 14th, 2006 | by Jason Coleman
5 Comments »
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Crossposted comment from Mobhappy:
Jason — We did as Google requested and asked via email to be omitted from the transcoding. They sent us a note saying that the process was complete about 24 hours later. However, they still transcode and nothing has changed. You are also propogating their misleading FAQ, unfortunately. I’m sure you guys are great, but Google isn’t in this area. Please layer in Yahoo’s mobile search instead.
Comment by Scott Rafer — March 14, 2006 #
Scott,
Thanks for pointing us towards Yahoo!’s mobile search. The truth is we used Google Mobile for Mobilicio.us because it was the first service we came across. If possible, we would love to offer other “mobilization” options (including no mobilization) and are actively looking into this.
I just now checked out Yahoo!’s mobile search. They aren’t currently transcoding non-mobile sites, which (despite the issues with how mobile-ready sites are handled) we feel is a key feature of our application.
I agree that sites which are already formatted for a mobile device should be more readily recognized by Google and not transcoded. After all, webmasters should be better able to make their content mobile-ready than a Google algorithm (at least we should hope so). It is sad that even their opt-out mechanism is not working as stated.
Are you suggesting that the type of re-purposing that Google does to sites should *never* be done? If so, do you have a similar feeling towards IE6’s pop-up blocker, Firefox plug-ins that block ads, and other similar applications? What about handicap people using screen readers to view websites? What about users with javascript or Flash disabled? What about Netscape 4.0 users? None of these people are going to view your website exactly how you intend them to.
I can see the issues that can occur when mobilization is done, but let’s not throw out the baby with the bathwater. Maybe I’m missing something.
Comment by Jason Coleman — March 14, 2006 #
Jason, no offense, but you are missing something. I’m going to put my phone number into your contact form. Please use it.
Comment by Scott Rafer — March 15, 2006 #
[…] It started off last week with Russell Buckley and his Who Gave Google Permission to be the Judge and Jury of Mobile Content? article at Mobhappy, followed by additional insights of Dave Harper in An Open Letter to Google: “Page adapted for mobile phone?” Please stop now, you are crippling sites, not adapting pages on his Different Things blog which initiated Jason Coleman from Mobilicio.us to explain about his app - and its relation to Google Mobile, at the mobilicio.us blog and over at m-trends.org. […]
Pingback by about context and the mobile web | gotomobile — March 16, 2006 #
[…] Well nothing changed and the debate continued without any feedback from Google, follow it here, here, here,, here and, here. […]
Pingback by Different Things » Blog Archive » How To: Removing Yourself From Google’s Mobile Transcoding Services — March 17, 2006 #