WebProNews

Tag: Mobile Search

  • Google Continues To Improve Crawling Capabilities For Smartphone Content

    Throughout 2013 and into 2014, Google has been making various improvements to the way it handles website content on mobile devices. That continues this week with the announcement of a new user-agent for crawling smartphone content.

    Google says it’s retiring “Googlebot-Mobile,” for smartphones, which has been used to refer to various mobile-specific crawlers that index content for both feature phones and smartphones. It will be going away within three to four weeks. After that, the user-agent for smartphones will simply be identified as “Googlebot,” but will list “mobile” elsewhere in the user-agent string.

    Google shows the difference between the new and old user-agents:

    < Google Crawling

    Google says it has seen cases where webmasters have inadvertently blocked smartphone crawling while trying to only block feature phone crawling.

    “This ambiguity made it impossible for Google to index smartphone content of some sites, or for Google to recognize that these sites are smartphone-optimized,” explains Google smartphone search engineer Zhijian He.

    The new Googlebot for smartphones crawler will follow robots.txt, robots meta tag and HTTP header directives for Googlebot as opposed to Googlebot-mobile.

    The update, He says, affects less than 0.001% of URLs, based on Google’s internal analysis.

    Webmasters can, of course, test their sites with the Fetch as Google feature in Webmaster Tools.

    Last month, Google expanded the Crawl Errors feature in Webmaster Tools to help webmasters identify pages on their sites that show smartphone crawl errors. Earlier in 2013, Google made several ranking changes for sites not configured for smartphone users.

    Google also started indexing in-app content, so smartphone users searching can access deep links in mobile apps from the search results page.

    Image via Google

  • Bing Updates Its iOS, Android Apps

    One of the best things about Bing is how its homepage is updated with a new picture every day. One day, you have an image of a polar bear frolicking in the snow and next you have an interactive haunted house that references all the best horror films of the past four decades. Now Bing is bringing its constantly changing homepage to mobile.

    Bing announced today that its mobile apps for Android, iPhone and iPad have been updated with an option to make the daily Bing homepage image your lockscreen image. As it does on Bing, the lockscreen image would change everyday with Bing.

    So, how do you use this feature? On Android, it’s quite simple really. All you have to do is hit the arrow button at the bottom of the screen. Here’s what it looks like:

    Bing Updates Its Android, iOS Apps

    If you want to do the same on iOS, it’s a little more complicated. First, you’ll need to sign into your Microsoft account. From there, tap the same button that you see above. This will walk through the process of setting up your SkyDrive folder to save the images for later use. Finally, go to settings -> Wallpapers & Brightness -> Choose Wallpaper to set the saved image as your background.

    While an update focused solely on images would certainly be worth of an entire blog post, Bing wants you to know that it’s also added a new sync feature. When using the Bing app, you can now sync your bookmarks and saved images to your Microsoft ID. This will allow you to access said bookmarks and images across any of the Bing apps on Android and iOS.

    You can grab the new Bing app today for Android, iPad and iPhone.

    [Image: Google Play]

  • Google Adds Functionality To ‘Skip Redirect’ For Smartphone SERPs

    Google has made a change to how Skip Redirect on smartphone SERPs works, so it now also uses the rel-alternate-media annotations recommended in Google’s guidelines on separate mobile URLs.

    Skip Redirect is when Google changes the link target it shows in smartphone results if it knows the URL it’s showing redirects users to a different smartphone-optimized page.

    “In this case, even if the desktop page doesn’t automatically redirect to the smartphone page, if we discover valid annotations linking the desktop and smartphone pages, our algorithms may still change the link target shown in the search results to point directly to the smartphone page,” Google’s Pierre Far says in a Google+ post. “I know many webmasters asked me about this exact thing, and now you can be happy.”

    “Skip redirect changed only the URL in the HTML, i.e., the click URL, and didn’t change the URL that was displayed,” he notes. “The rel-alternate-media annotations change both, i.e. we display and link directly to the smartphone URL.”

    The Skip Redirect feature was introduced in late 2011. More on this and smartphone Googlebot-mobile in a blog post from the Webmaster Central blog.

    [via Search Engine Roundtable]

  • Google Prepares ‘Several Ranking Changes’ For Sites Not Configured For Smartphone Users

    Google announced on Tuesday that it plans to roll out “several ranking changes” in the near future, which address sites that are “misconfigured for smartphone users.”

    Essentially, if your content provides errors on smartphones, your rankings are going to suffer.

    “Some websites use separate URLs to serve desktop and smartphone users,” explain Google’s Yoshikiyo Kato and Pierre Far. “A faulty redirect is when a desktop page redirects smartphone users to an irrelevant page on the smartphone-optimized website. A typical example is when all pages on the desktop site redirect smartphone users to the homepage of the smartphone-optimized site.”

    Smartphone redirects

    “This kind of redirect disrupts a user’s workflow and may lead them to stop using the site and go elsewhere,” they add. “Even if the user doesn’t abandon the site, irrelevant redirects add more work for them to handle, which is particularly troublesome when they’re on slow mobile networks. These faulty redirects frustrate users whether they’re looking for a webpage, video, or something else, and our ranking changes will affect many types of searches.”

    Google advises that you redirect smartphone users from a desktop page to its equivalent smartphone-optimized page, and if the content in question doesn’t exist in smartphone-optimized form, show the desktop content rather than an irrelevant redirect.

    Google also runs down a list of common smartphone-only errors you should avoid, and links to tips for redirects and recommendations for mobile content. Read the post here.

  • Apple Adds Yandex As Safari Search Choice In Some Countries

    Apple is giving its users more search choices with its upcoming operating system releases – iOS 7 and OS X Mavericks. Both were unveiled at the company’s Worldwide Developers Conference on Monday.

    In the iOS 7 demo, it was revealed that Siri has some new features, and among them are Bing web search results, not to mention Twitter search and Wikipedia content. In addition to potentially making Bing more of a factor in users’ search habits, the features also help Apple better compete with Google’s (and Android’s) conversational search and Knowledge Graph.

    But that’s not all that Apple has done with search. While the company didn’t exactly announce it, it has also made Russian search engine Yandex available as an option in Safari in both iOS 7 and OS X Mavericks. This is the case in Russia, Ukraine and Turkey, where that search engine already has a substantial user base.

    Now, Apple hasn’t gone so far as to make Yandex the default search in these countries, at least not in the beta that developers have gotten their hands on.

    Safari adds Yandex

    This signals that Apple isn’t ready to completely abandon Google just yet, despite the increasingly rocky relationship between the two companies. If you’ll recall, Apple recently dropped Google Maps for its own Maps product, and some have speculated that it’s only a matter of time before Google is no longer the default search on Apple products.

    That could still happen, and we could just be in the early stages of Apple phasing it out. TechCrunch reported earlier this year, however, that Google could pay Apple $1 billion next year to remain the default search engine on iOS. How much would Microsoft pay? Or Yandex?

    [via GigaOm]

  • Google Mobile Results Get Expandable Sitelinks, ‘Quick View’ Badges

    Google announced a couple of updates to its mobile search results today. One is for expandable site links like these:

    Quick View

    “When you’re searching for information on the go, speed matters,” write software engineers Hiroshi Mizuno and Alex Fischer on Google’s Inside Search blog. “If you want to check out Rotten Tomatoes for a new movie to go see with your friends, you might not want to navigate through the Rotten Tomatoes homepage to find the list of top movies while your friends are anxiously waiting. Now, there’s a faster way to get to the Rotten Tomatoes page with just the info you need most — just look for a new quick link for “In Theaters” underneath the main Rotten Tomatoes link when you search on your mobile phone. You’ll see these expandable sitelinks appear for many sites to help you get to a specific section quickly.”

    The other new feature is the addition of “quick view” badges next to some results.

    Quick View

    Quick View

    “Say you’re new to poker or need a quick refresh on hands — just search for ‘poker hands’, and you can now click the blue badge and see a quick view of the Wikipedia page listing out the poker hands immediately,” the engineers say.

    This is considered an experimental feature, and currently just works with Wikipedia results, but Google says it will expand this in time.

  • Google Launches Some Usability Improvements For Handwrite

    Google launched Google Handwrite in July. It’s a feature that lets you search Google from your smartphone or tablet, by simply writing your query with your finger, rather than having to type it out with the keyboard or use voice search. I’ve always thought it was a cool feature, but outside of playing around with it when it launched, I can’t say I’ve ever found it particularly useful. Still, another option never hurt anybody, and it should at least please those who are concerned about the art of handwriting going by the wayside.

    Google really hasn’t done much with Google Handwrite since launch (though it did release a similar offering for Google Translate before it even launched this).

    Today, Google announced that it has improved the recognition quality for Google Handwrite, and added some features to make it easier and faster to handwrite your searches.

    “You can now distinguish between ambiguous characters, overlap your characters, and write multiple characters at a time in Chinese,” says product manager Lawrence Chang.

    Google Handwrite update

    “If you’ve tried Handwrite before, you may have had some trouble entering a lowercase ‘L’, the number ‘1’, or a capital ‘I’,” says Chang. “Now, we provide alternate interpretations of your characters that you can select above the space bar. Similarly, in Japanese the characters ‘イ’ and ‘ィ’ look nearly identical but are different characters and produce different search results. If Google interprets your handwriting one way and you meant the other, you can now more easily make a correction.”

    Google has also now made it so you can write letters over top of one another, so you don’t have to try and squeeze them all in on a small screen, or input them one at a time. In Chinese, you can now write multiple characters at a time on a single line.

    While these features make the feature better, for sure, I’m still not sure that is a great deal of advantage to using it over other search options. I have grown pretty fond of Voice Search though.

  • It’s Not Google Maps, But Google Has A New Search App For iOS (With Enhanced Voice Search)

    Google has launched a new Google Search app for iPhone, iPad, and iPod Touch, complete with enhanced voice search, leading many to draw comparisons to Apple’s own Siri.

    “When you have a question, finding the answer should be effortless—wherever you are and whatever device you’re using,” says Google Search engineer Kenneth Bongort. “The new Google Search app for iPhone and iPad helps you to do just that with enhanced voice search that answers any question with the comprehensive Google search results you know and love.”

    Take a look:

    “Fast and accurate voice recognition technology enables Google to understand exactly what you’re saying,” says Bongort. “Getting an answer is as simple as tapping on the microphone icon and asking a question like, ‘Is United Airlines flight 318 on time?’ Your words appear as you speak, you get your answer immediately and—if it’s short and quick, like the status and departure time of your flight—Google tells you the answer aloud.”

    The app makes use of Google’s Knowledge Graph, which continues to expand in breadth. Because of this, you can ask it questions about sports stadiums, trailers for movies, time changes, and television casts, to name a few.

    iOS users are still waiting for a new Google Maps app.

  • Google Adds Familiar Navigation to Mobile Homepage

    Google is making efforts to make its mobile experience more unified, much like it has been doing with the desktop experience over the past year or so. Google has updated its mobile homepage to include a new navigation panel, which basically mirrors the one found in the Google+ app. It’s pretty much the mobile version of the top black navigation bar you see across Google products on the desktop, except it is accessible by a button in the corner, which brings it out from the left side.

    Google announced the update in a Google+ post:

    Google

    Google13 hours ago

    Today we’re rolling out a new look for the mobile Google homepage. Now, when you tap the new menu button in the upper left you’ll see a sidebar with other popular Google products, helping you get to them quickly and easily. If you’ve upgraded to Google+, you’ll also see your Google+ notifications and the share button. Visit www.google.com on your Android phone or iPhone to give it a try, and let us know what you think in the comments!

    1318    180 Powered by socialditto

    Google has also made the desktop ratings system for Google+ Local more like the mobile version it launched last month.

    These are just the latest moves Google has made to make its products feel less like separate products and more like big one (which is the same reason Google consolidated its privacy policies earlier this year).

    Do you like the more unified direction Google is going in?

  • Wajam Hits iPhone, Adds Friends To Search On Google Maps, Safari

    Social search provider Wajam has launched on the iPhone with a new feature, which adds recommendations from your friends directly in Google Maps and Safari on the iPhone.

    “The breakthrough is that we can insert social content in third-party apps (Google Maps and Safari), something that is impossible to do with the current Apple SDK,” CEO Martin-Luc Archambault tells WebProNews. “We have a patent pending on this technology.”

    Here’s a look:

    “I think Apps should be able to communicate between each other and I think with this release, we are showing how amazing your phone would be if Apple, Facebook and Google were friends and wanted to do business together,” Archambault adds.

    Wajam takes advantage of your friends from Twitter, Facebook and Google+ in search results.

    The company says in a blog post:

    The new mobile-enhanced version of Wajam is TRUSTe Certified, adding to the highest security certifications from TRUSTe, McAfee and Norton we’ve already received for our Social Search Everywhere browser extension.

    To use Wajam from the iPhone, simply go to wajam.com from your device.

  • Google Adds Search To The Android Camera With Goggles Update

    Google has released a new update for Google Goggles on Android. The features primarily deal with making it a better shopping tool.

    New features include improved recognition of products, the ability to browse similar products, and easier search from the camera.

    “We’ve increased our coverage of products and barcodes that Goggles recognizes, with a focus on international products and barcodes,” Google said in a Google+ post.

    “Have you ever struggled to replace a favorite dress?” Google adds. “Goggles can help you find products that are similar to something you’ve owned or seen before. When you take a picture of an item and Goggles can’t find an exact match, you’ll have the option to browse products by category that look similar to your image. Refine by category, brands or gender, or long press an item to explore products that are similar to that selection.”

    Google Goggles update

    As far as the “Search From Camera” feature, Google Goggles now lets you turn on the app with one click from within your Android Camera app. You have to enable this feature from within the Goggles app. When the camera detects images with search results, those results will appear in your notifications. Kind of cool.

    One last new feature adds a preview of pages that are linked from QR codes that you scan.

  • Google Reveals More Mobile Search Improvements

    Google has put out a giant list of “search quality highlights” from June and July. You can see the entire list here. There are 86 different changes (not counting the ones Google blogged about previously). You can take a closer look at the changes specifically related to quality here.

    There were a couple of interesting changes Google made in June, which fall into the “Alternative Search Methods” category. In fact, that is the project codename the changes were part of.

    Essentially, both changes are designed to make the mobile search functionality a little more convenient for the user. The first one should do just that, if you use voice search and Google Finance regularly.

    “We’ve improved finance results to better understand finance-seeking queries spoken on mobile,” Google says of the change (#82921).

    The second change may make it easier to find where you’re going from the car.

    “When you search for directions to or from a location on your mobile device without specifying the start point, we’ll return results starting from your current position,” Google says of change #82961.

    Of course, there are plenty of other mobile-related changes on the list. Google has improved caching of different components of the SERPs, for one.

    Google has also made changes to the movie showtimes feature on mobile, to improve recognition of natural language queries, as well as overall coverage.

    In fact, another change Google made to Google Finance on mobile is an improved display for voice search queries.

    Google says it has also improved the display of local business info in certain mobile use cases, such as highlighting info relevant to the search (phone numbers, addresses, hours, etc.).

    Last week, Google announced some additional improvements to mobile quick answer results, and in late July, Google introduced the Handwrite search feature.

  • Google Announces Improvements To Mobile Quick Answer Results

    Google announced today that it is adding some improvements to some of the quick answers-style search results it gives users, across a variety of subject areas.

    “Today when you search on mobile or tablet, you’ll see some more improvements in the way we provide these quick answers, including better understanding what information you need and surfacing the most relevant information for you,” says Google User Experience Designer Jeromy Henry. “For example, in our flight status quick answer, we’ve included a flight progress indicator and increased the size of arrival and departure times so you can quickly see when your loved ones will be landing.”

    Google Richer Answers

    “Other quick answer features we’re updating on mobile and tablet cover finance, currency conversion, unit conversion, dictionary definitions, local time lookup, and holiday and sunrise times,” adds Henry. “In all these quick answers we’ve simplified the experience so you can focus on the answer you were looking for. For example, for unit conversions the answer is displayed prominently for a question like [how many miles are 42 kilometers]. If you’d like to convert another unit of measure like [how many yards in a mile], you can simply tap the card and see the full unit converter right there.”

    Richer conversion results

    Google says the changes are rolling out to Google.com in English on mobile and tablets.

    Google announced the changes on its Inside Search blog – the first announcement here since the addition of handwriting as a search option for mobile. Typically, Google posts monthly lists of search algorithm changes to the blog, but has so far not posted any such list for the past two months.

  • Google’s Siri Comes To iPhone And iPad

    Google’s Siri Comes To iPhone And iPad

    If you have an iPhone and were hoping to have another search assistant that talks back to you, Google has you covered.

    As one of a handful of search announcements this week, Google announced that its new and improved voice search, announced for Android at Google I/O is coming soon to iOS (4.2+).

    “Often the most natural way to ask a question is by asking aloud,” says Google’s Amit Singhal in the announcement. “So we’ve combined our speech recognition expertise, understanding of language and the Knowledge Graph so that Voice Search can better interpret your questions and sometimes speak the answers back as full sentences. This has been available on Android for a few weeks and people love it. It’ll soon be available on your iPhone or iPad (iOS version 4.2+).”

    “You just need to tap the microphone icon and ask your question, the same way you’d ask a friend,” adds Singhal. “For example, ask ‘What movies are playing this weekend?’ and you’ll see your words streamed back to you quickly as you speak. Then Google will show you a list of the latest movies in theaters near you, with schedules and even trailers. It works for everything from celebrity factoids to the height of Kilamanjaro and more. When Google can supply a direct answer to your question, you’ll get a spoken response too.”

    Now, obviously the feature is limited to Google search, and does not do all the things Siri can do, but it will be interesting to see how the feature competes with Siri on some types of information retrieval among iOS users.

    The feature comes at a time when Google and Apple are growing further and further apart. Earlier this summer, Apple announced its new Maps offering, distancing itself from Google Maps, and just this week, it became known that Apple is also dropping its YouTube app. Of course, Google is just offering its own apps, which many users will no doubt use anyway.

    This particular voice search feature appears to be just another way for Google to combat any souring relationship with Apple, and stay relevant to users.

  • Google Shows That It Cares If Your Site Is Optimized For Smartphones

    Google is testing a new mobile search feature, which displays a small smartphone icon next to results for pages that have been optimized for smartphones.

    The feature was first spotted by Bryson Meunier, the Director of Content Solutions at Resolution Media, who blogged about it, showing the following screen cap:

    Google SERP with Mobile-optimized icon

    He says he was seeing the icon next to Wikipedia and IMDB results, as well as for other sites with mobile content.

    Meunier also updated his post with an official confirmation from Google about the test, saying, “We’re experimenting with ways to optimize the mobile search experience, including helping users identify smartphone-optimized sites.”

    Perhaps there are more approaches out there in the wild.

    Google has been encouraging webmasters to optimize their sites for mobile for quite some time. In recent months, they’ve really ramped up this encouragement with their GoMo campaign.

    It’s in Google’s best interest to see that content is optimized for mobile phones as mobile search queries begin to grow. It doesn’t reflect very well on Google or the Google user experience when the search engine points to pages that are awkward for users.

    It’s obviously in webmasters’ best interest to provide users with optimized experiences to keep them from leaving their sites before converting.

    Hat tip to Barry Schwartz for pointing to Meunier’s post.

  • Now You Can Google By Handwriting

    Google announced a new feature for mobile search, called Handwrite, which lets you search Google from your smartphone or tablet by simply writing your query with your finger, rather than having to type it out with the keyboard (or use voice search).

    Check it out:

    To enable the feature, hit “settings” at the bottom of Google.com in your mobile browser, and enable “Handwrite”. Once you’ve saved the setting, it should appear on Google.com (you may have to refresh).

    “We designed Handwrite to complement rather than replace typing: with the feature enabled, you can still use the keyboard at any time by tapping on the search box,” writes Google software engineer Rui Ueyama. “Handwrite is experimental, and works better in some browsers than others—on Android devices, it works best in Chrome.”

    The feature is available for iOS 5 and up, Android 2.3 and up phones, and Android 4.0 and up tablets. It works in 27 languages.

    Google released a similar feature for Google Translate earlier this year. It was impressive then, and it’s nice to see it make its way to Google’s flagship search product.

  • Government May Hold Google Back In Mobile Search Innovation, Even With Competition On The Rise

    Earlier this month, Google was reported to have submitted a proposal to settle with the European Commission with regards to concerns expressed by the Commission’s head of competition, Joaquin Almunia. Details of Google’s proposal were not made public, but newer reports indicate that Almunia has added the condition that Google’s changes to its search results be applied to mobile search, as well as desktop.

    This is according to a highly-cited Financial Times report (registration required), which indicates that Google could face a huge fine (in the billions), if Google and the Commission can’t reach an agreement. They’ve reportedly been negotiating since Google submitted its proposal at the beginning of the month.

    The initial concerns laid out by Almunia, include Google’s displaying of links to its own vertical search services (as if Google’s competitors are playing the game so differently), Google “copying content from competing vertical search services and using it in its own offerings,” agreements between Google and partners on websites in which Google delivers ads, and “restrictions that Google puts to the portability of online search advertising campaigns” from AdWords to competitors’ platforms. You can see these concerns, as discussed by Almunia (verbatim), here.

    It’s clear that the mobile approach to search is only gaining in importance as more and more consumers reach for their phones first, when looking to perform a quick search. Ironically, competition for Google is greater than it has ever been in the mobile space (see recent Apple announcements), and any restrictions set forth by government agencies will only hold Google back in the competitive landscape.

    It will be interesting to see if longtime Googler, and now Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer will be able to make any kind of mark for the struggling Internet giant. If I had to bet on any executive being able to turn search around for the company, Mayer would be on the short list of possibilities. If Google has its hands tied by government restrictions, it could be an opportune time for any such competitor to make significant moves. Yahoo has already been trying to make a bigger mark in mobile search with Axis. Mayer, no doubt, has plenty more ideas.

    Microsoft obviously has plenty of its own ideas about mobile search, as Bing continues to gain market share, little by little.

    Realistically, however, Google has already won over so many search users, who have been using Google for so long, it’s hard to imagine the company’s share of the market dropping too drastically (at least in the near term). User experience can go a long way, but brands and habits can be pretty hard to break.

  • Google Says These New Local Ads Will Increase Click-Through Rates By 100%

    Google has redesigned its local ad formats for Google Maps for Mobile. The company says the new formats have performed well in tests, increasing click-through rates by 100%.

    The calls to action, like “click to call” or “get directions” have been made more prominent in the new formats, making them more clickable, according to Google. There’s a new hyperlocal marker, which shows how close the user is to the advertiser’s business location.

    Additionally, when a user clicks the ad, it will take them to the advertiser’s website within the app itself.

    You can see the difference in how the new formats look, compared to the old here:

    New mobile local ads

    “Ads in Google Maps for Mobile are one of many ways advertisers are delivering relevant local answers to people’s questions on mobile,” said Mobile Ads product manager Jay Akkad. “Likewise, a recent campaign from T-Mobile shows how search ads, combined with location extensions, enabled them to reach users close to their store locations across mobile search and maps.”

    “Mobile technology is enabling people to connect with businesses in new ways via smartphones and tablets,” said Akkad. “People use search and click to businesses’ websites, but they are also clicking to make phone calls, find directions to walk into local stores, and more.”

    The new design is rolling out today to newer versions of Android.

  • Google and Mindshare Create Mobile Garage to Educate Companies on Mobile

    Google does an awful lot to educate the public on new technology. They also do a lot to bring us new technology, but their latest effort is more focused on companies.

    Google has teamed up with Mindshare to help educate companies and businesses on mobile. The project is called Mobile Garage, and its all about showing companies how they can take advantage of the medium in the marketplace.

    Groups of experts in New York, London, and Singapore will help Mindshare clients with mobile aspects like creating apps, search optimization, and countless other information that can help businesses grow and evolve using mobile.

    Nick Emery, CEO Mindshare Worldwide comments on the utility of Mindshare:

    “We designed Mindshare to be open source and to work with the best partners for the benefit of our clients. It’s about trial, experimentation and speed to re-design our business. Working with Google on mobile will give our clients a competitive advantage in a key battleground both now and for the future.”

    Matt Brittin, VP, Sales and Operations, Northern and Central Europe comments on teaming up with Mindshare:

    “We have adopted a ‘mobile first’ philosophy at Google to keep pace with the rapid acceleration in consumer mobile usage. We are delighted to team up with Mindshare on a similar strategy for their clients. Mindshare have already shown strong momentum in the mobile marketing space, and have a great opportunity to lead their clients to win on mobile in the future.”

    Mindshare already has relationships with sibling WPP mobile shops Joule and H-Art, and the Mobile Garage venture will work well to complement those partnerships. There’s no doubt that having Google educate businesses on mobile represents a distinct advantage.

  • Google Has New Advice For Mobile SEO

    Google has been pushing its “GoMo” campaign for a while, trying to get sites set up for mobile success, but today, Google posted specific recommendations for smartphone-optimized sites on its Webmaster Central blog.

    Google says it supports the following configurations for sites targeting smartphones:

    1. Sites that use responsive web design, i.e. sites that serve all devices on the same set of URLs, with each URL serving the same HTML to all devices and using just CSS to change how the page is rendered on the device. This is Google’s recommended configuration.

    2. Sites that dynamically serve all devices on the same set of URLs, but each URL serves different HTML (and CSS) depending on whether the user agent is a desktop or a mobile device.

    3. Sites that have a separate mobile and desktop sites.

    Google Webmaster Trends analyst Pierre Far also lists two advantages of utilizing responsive web design:

    1. It keeps your desktop and mobile content on a single URL, which is easier for your users to interact with, share, and link to and for Google’s algorithms to assign the indexing properties to your content.

    2. Google can discover your content more efficiently as we wouldn’t need to crawl a page with the different Googlebot user agents to retrieve and index all the content.

    Google “strongly” recommends using the Vary HTTP header to let its algorithms know that the content might change for different user agents. Google says it uses this as a crawling signal for Googlebot-Mobile.

    The company also notes in a help center article, “Don’t block Googlebot from crawling any page assets (CSS, javascript, and images) using robots.txt or otherwise. Being able to access these external files fully will help our algorithms detect your site’s responsive web design configuration and treat it appropriately.”

    Google has specific annotations for desktop and mobile URLs that it says will help its algorithms understand your site. There is a whole section about this in Google’s Building Smartphone-Optimized Sites recommendation page.

    A recent study from Adobe found that website visits from tablets grew about 10 times faster than the rate of smartphones within two years of market introduction, and by over 300% in the last year. Part of the reason for this, according to the company, is that the majority of sites are not optimized for mobile, and this is reflected when users view them on smartphones. Tablets tend to handle the sites better, to where the optimization isn’t as much of a factor.

    “Tablets are better for surfing than smartphones,” Adobe Digital Index Director, Austin Bankhead, told WebProNews at the time.

    Perhaps if enough sites take Google’s advice, smartphone web surfing in general will be better for everyone.

  • Google Makes Changes To Local Listings On Android, iOS

    Google Makes Changes To Local Listings On Android, iOS

    Google has made some adjustments to local search results on Android and iOS devices. Users can now see an experience that more closely resembles that of the desktop experience.

    “I’ll admit it, I’m a bit of a picky eater,” writes Google software engineer Dan Zivkovic on the company’s Inside Search blog. “If I’m choosing a restaurant, I want to know that it has good reviews, that they’ll have food items I like, that it’s not too expensive, and all that. With the new changes to the local listings in search on mobile devices, now I’ll be able to see more details about places quickly and make decisions more easily — whether about restaurants or any other type of place.”

    “For example, if I search for [restaurants dallas] on my mobile phone now, I’m presented with a list of local results as usual,” says Zivkovic. “Now, if I click on the name of the place, I instantly see a summary of the business, with reviews, photos, and more details, similar to the local information you see when searching on your computer. Okay, this place looks fine, but what about the other results from the list? With a simple swipe of the page left or right, I can see the local result before or after this one, to quickly compare the different options and make a decision on where to eat.”

    Google has recently made some adjustments to how it handles local searches in general. Earlier this month, Google put out a list of algorithm changes it made in April. Several of them had to do with local. These included: more local sites from organizations, improvements to local navigational searches, more comprehensive predictions for local queries and improvements to the triggering of Google’s public data search.

    It’s getting closer to the end of May, so before too long we should see Google’s big list of changes for this month. It will be interesting to see how many of these are related to local searches.