Travel On The Go: Mobile Website Marketing

I just read Bruce Clay's Blog page, "The Death of .Mobi", about .mobi being rather obsolete. To be accurate, it's a blog written in 2008 and it's not what Bruce Clay says. But still, after we put up our .mobi travel site, it's not news I wanted to hear. So I am on a quest to understand this and happy to share it with whoever is interested.

First off, I wonder why the search engines are using .com extensions, like m.bing.com, m,google.com, taptu.com, mobile.yahoo.com and mobile.ask.com and not .mobi.

dotMobi was conceived as an alternate domain extension in the same style as .com, .net, or .org. It was meant to be specially for content designed for mobile devices where Web pages have smaller images, reduced graphics etc. So why are search engines dedicated to dotMobe websites not using this domain?

In the blog, Dhana Pawar says that "dotMobi isn’t needed today, thanks to devices like the iPhone and Skyfire. We don’t need a different domain name. It’s redundant. The iPhone loads an ad the same way a computer does. If the iPhone is just loading a normal Internet ad in a custom size, there’s no real need for a special mobile ad network".

That is Not the Way I See It!

Mobile users want their web search engine to be part of the mobile web. They want "real web" search results to fit on their Smartphone. They want games, news, movies, web pages, booking engines to be re-sized. They don't want it re-sized by crunching it all up, so that thumbs and fingers can't navigate tiny links. They actually want it to be smart; in effect, redesigned for their pocket devices.

This fragments the web into at least two dramatically different standards. One website for mobile and one for real web.

In the early days of Smartphones, there were few websites designed for the iPhone and other Smartphone mobiles. The thinking was that apps would replace web searches. This is clearly not going to happen. Travelers look at 12 to 20 hotel and tourism website before making a final choice. Imagine if travelers had to download an app each time they wanted to see a hotel. Apps make no sense at all in this situation. Apps are good for games and services, not for hotel websites and general website information.

As more websites are optimised for Smartphones, mobile users will need to differentiate the results on a search. Google mobile strategy is to deliver relevant results, mobile to mobile, on all searches. It seems then that there might be a single real web search for all.

Currently, searches can occur on the mobile search sites (m.google.com, google.com/mobile/) or the regular search site (google.com). Smartphone users can use both. The choice of which web search to use can be, and sometimes is, determined by the device and the browser installed. The mobile version of the Opera browser can be configured so that it defaults to the mobile web or not. The Internet Explorer on a Windows Mobile device will take you to the mobile versions of sites like Yahoo! and YouTube, whether you want it to or not.

Ideally, users what to search once in one place to see relevant results. They may wish to turn off some web results and filter results specifically to mobile websites. Much like Google currently does for its web search, you can see news, images, videos, maps etc. I expect that a Mobile Search filter option will come soon.

The filtered solution would eliminate this choice, especially if the option to change display is built right into the real web search and not a separate option. In this world, m.google.com is simply a choice when searching the web and not something you have to enter into the browser.

Perhaps standards will merge as new development tools and techniques come on stream. Perhaps a development platform will build websites which morph into the right resolution and dimension based on the device that is viewing. Perhaps browsers will be smart enought to adapt to any device. In this future world, search will be ubiquitous. One search for all.

Content adaptation is a promising approach to the solution. Here, software transforms the Real Website to fit the specification of the Mobile viewing it. The results are not always what is expected, particularly with old generation websites that are not suitable formatted for adaptation engines to interpret. These systems, however, are smart, learning engines that adjust based on trial and error over time. In the meantime a combination of automatic adaption and human interface may be needed.

Automatic content adaptation requires a special processor to select, modify and create pages in the device-specific format. IBM's Websphere Everyplace Mobile Portal (WEMP), BEA Systems' WebLogic Mobility Server, Morfeo's MyMobileWeb and Apache Cocoon are examples of these processors. WAFL (Website Adaptation and Formatting Layer) is now used by Joomla and similar technology is used by some content management systems. The arcRes Website Publishing System is a similar approach that dynamically creates a mobile-rendered version of the content.

The fact is that PCs and Mobiles are diverging rather than merging. PC displays get bigger, while mobile displays still need to fit into a pocket. Then, we have the tablets and iPad varying from 6 inches to 10 inches in display diameter. It looks like we will need different standards for some time yet.

The best practice today is to build websites with a tourism platform: A content management and publishing system, which can publish out to whatever standard or dimension you want. Content duplication is an issue that cannot be avoided in the future. Search engines, already adjusting their practices for syndication of content, must now make exception for duplicate content on mobiles.Then all devices and syndication can co-exist. Mobile and Real Web search results are simply options that are delivered according to relevance and user preference.

.Mobi is not dead yet. But if the web morphs into a single standard with many options, there will be less need for a separate .mobi domain. Dotcom is the prevailing TLD; even after a lot of hype went into .info, .travel and all the others, it prevails as the standard.In the Mobile world the people choice is still .com and m.*.com is the clear favorite.

The birth of .com alternatives was more about nomenclature and branding than standards. Dotmobi, by contrast, defines a standard. Unlike the other TLD, it exists with a set of specifications and best practices and requires .modi sites to be consistent with their guidelines and be optimized for mobile phones.

Building a dotMobi site means that your URL will automatically feature on the ICANN 'zone files' which are used by mobile search engines & directories for the indexing of mobile-centric websites. Around 5,000 interested parties request these files each month.

As the web moves to embrace Mobile more, the .Mobi TDL is more likely to be a brand choice. As such, I think it has less merit. Dotcom is the default, and if you want to build a travel directory site, you may as well call it something like travel-on-the-go.com. Like Google does, you can then create a subdomain with the "m." prefix as in m.google.com for the mobile version of your website. This is more efficient and consistent as a brand.

Tim Berners-Lee of the World Wide Web Consortium, claims that dotMobi breaks the device independence of the web:^[7]

"It is fundamentally useful to be able to quote the URI for some information and then look up that URI in an entirely different context. For example, I may want to look up a restaurant on my laptop, bookmark it, and then, when I only have my phone, check the bookmark to have a look at the evening menu. Or, my travel agent may send me a pointer to my itinerary for a business trip. I may view the itinerary from my office on a large screen and want to see the map, or I may view it at the airport from my phone when all I want is the gate number".

So there it is: two compelling and contrary points of view. Like so many things in technology, the solution for you may be a compromise. For now, it does no harm to have a dotMobi. And as the index is used by mobile search and directories, it's a good first step to getting listed. It makes sense to also protect your brand with .com and to link the .com to the mobi.

The standards issue is, in my mind, temporary. I expect that the the Internet will inherit the DotMobi specifications as a natural evolution, including all forms of adaptive technology, browser development and middleware innovations.