Feedback for: Dot-Mobi, We Hardly Knew Ye
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Dot-Mobi, We Hardly Knew Ye by Rebecca Lieb
Congratulations to Ms. Lieb on chairing what was undoubtedly an influential panel discussion. It is unfortunate, however, that the presenter, Ms. Krum, who is quoted as an expert in both search engine optimization and mobile websites appears to have provided misinformation to the conference attendees.
SEO Inaccuracies
From a search engine optimization perspective, she warns attendees about duplicate content. In fact, Matt Cutts of Google has already declared that mobile sites are not penalized for duplicate content. Additionally, creating a site with an "m." in front of the domain name creates a subdomain, which does not receive the PageRank of the root domain. Additionally, the "m." does not appear as a mobile site in the zone file and is not recognized as a mobile site. As a mobile blogger, I have firsthand experience with numerous dot-mobi sites on the first page of Google and Yahoo, so it is inaccurate to state that dot-mobi is bad for SEO.
Transcoding Inaccuracies
Ms. Krum advocates the use of transcoding, and Ms. Lieb says it is foolproof. Transcoding is anything but foolproof. In a recent blog post on mobiEnthusiast.mobi, I demonstrated that transcoded sites are problematic and are prone to be displayed incorrectly, especially if they rely on tables for design. The demonstrated site was a professional style site with a dark gray background, and the transcoded version appeared as chunks of gray blocks interspersed with random-looking text.
Furthermore, there is no guarantee that the mobile provider will take the mobile directions into consideration when rendering the site. For example, both Sprint PCS in the United States and Vodaphone in the U.K. require mobile Website owners to register their sites with a whitelist to avoid ignoring the header information, which stores the instructions to show a mobile site as it was designed. Dot-mobi sites, however, are automatically whitelisted because it is assumed that they will be properly formatted for mobile devices. How many other carriers will institute random transcoding when their customers start complaining that the Websites are not loading properly? How long of a delay will there be before a client's non-dot-mobi mobile Website is listed on the whitelist? How can anyone guarantee that a site will stay on the whitelist? I'm not prepared to gamble like that with my business or that of my clients. Mobile carriers back dot-mobi in this manner and that works for me.
IPhone Inaccuracies
I have an iPhone and regularly use the mobile Internet, and here is what happens: non-mobile sites are shrunk down to the point where they are unreadable. Using a pinching motion, the site can is made smaller, and using a reverse-pinching motion makes the type on the page larger. It's actually quite time consuming, much like zooming and dragging Google Maps to find the correct destination.
Additionally, the argument that iPhone has killed dot-mobi is refuted by Apple itself, as numerous dot-mobi sites are listed on the Apple apps site.
Dot-Mobi Is Dead Inaccuracies
Dot-mobi sites are being adopted daily by multinational corporations. You can see a list of them on Why .mobi and mtld.mobi/showcase. If dot-mobi is dead, why would established companies, most notably banks, financial institutions, automobile manufacturers, luxury brands, and other consumer goods companies spend time and money promoting them? They wouldn't. In this tight economy, businesses are spending money on things that work, and dot-mobi works.
The simple fact is that dot-mobi and the standards behind it are alive and well. The more people use mobile phones to access the Internet, the more they will realize that a properly designed dot-mobi site is quick, convenient, and marketable -- more so than any of its counterparts.
Holly Kolman
mobiEnthusiast.mobi
You wrote a very interesting, helpful piece on dot-mobi. I am glad I read ye.
When I just bought a couple of URLs recently, I opted to reject the mobi categories. Thanks for confirming my decisions.
D. Kent Pingel
PingWi-Fi
