{"id":287,"date":"2007-03-29T21:18:25","date_gmt":"2007-03-30T04:18:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/wapreview.com\/?p=287"},"modified":"2020-09-26T17:16:44","modified_gmt":"2020-09-27T00:16:44","slug":"mobile-search-wars-heat-up","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wapreview.com\/287\/","title":{"rendered":"Mobile Search Wars Heat Up"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"It looks like Google has come up with an answer to Yahoo’s oneSearch<\/em> (review<\/a>). When you visit mobile Google search (google.com\/m<\/a>), there’s a new link at the top of the page heralding “New<\/strong> Try our new mobile search” Follow that link and you’ll see a page that works a whole lot like oneSearch<\/em>. Gone are the options to search Web, Images, Local Listings<\/em> and Mobile Web<\/em>. In their place is a single search box. Searches now return a mixture of results from the web, mobile web, news and images – much like with oneSearch<\/em>. Again, like oneSearch<\/em>, a field appears on most results pages, where you can specify a location to obtain local shopping and events results related to your query. Like oneSearch<\/em>, Google lists the latest scores as the first result for queries consisting of the name of a sports team – although if you look at the image 0n the right Google doesn’t list tonight’s currently in progress game! Bug?<\/p>\n

[rant<\/strong>] I have very mixed feelings about this new Google Search interface. On the one hand, like oneSearch<\/em>, it does typically require less keying to find what you are looking for. But, and this is huge<\/strong>, Google seems to have largely abandoned the mobile web<\/strong> as a source of \"results for queries. The old Google mobile search offers a choice of searching the full web or the mobile web. The new version mixes mobile and web results together – although you will be hard pressed to find the mobile ones. There are many more web than mobile results and the mobile ones don’t receive any priority, in fact they tend to be buried, often not appearing in the first screen of results at all. Google seems to think that users prefer transcoded copies of full web pages over pages designed for mobile. I don’t agree. Google’s transcoder is one of the best – but transcoded pages remain harder to navigate and less attractive<\/strong> than good mobile specific ones. This change is bad for the future of the mobile web<\/strong> too, Google’s mobile search drives the majority of traffic to mobile sites. This de-emphasis of mobile results will cause that traffic to drop drastically.  Everyone involved in the mobile web should be up in arms about this. Let Google know what you think<\/strong> on their mobile search comment form<\/a>.  If you need any more convincing read Nadir Garouche’s excellent Google Has Killed the Mobile Web<\/a>.  oneSearch <\/em>is much better in this regard with a separate category for mobile sites on the first screen of results and a More mobile web<\/em> link that leads to pages of nothing but mobile web results [end rant<\/strong>].<\/p>\n

There are some other differences between the two services. Three I noticed are:<\/p>\n