Google’s most computationally expensive tool for Mobile friendly websites
Recently when we were at Google, we were introduced to the most computationally expensive tool of Google (In their own words, so it is official that this is the most computationally expensive Google tool). It is Google Web Transcoder. http://m.google.com/gwt/n.
http://m.google.com/gwt/n – Google Web Transcoder
You won’t find big explanations about it. Transcoding (in other words parsing web pages) is the process of reusing the existing page/content (that is not made for mobiles) for some devices (In this case, mobile devices). This generally filters out the images and optimizes the content for the mobile devices.
Is Google Web Transcoder the best
Not sure, I liked http://mowser.com/web/seoforclients.com better than http://m.google.com/gwt/n?u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.seoforclients.com
Why mobile friendly websites
- The demand for mobile access to web based services is set to increase dramatically in the near future.
- Mobile users have different needs.
- Mobile users have different expectations.
- Biggest challenge is the screen sizes, the screens are very small.
- Even the mobile browsers has limited functionality.
- Text input issues: I remember the Apple App presentation at DAL. They struggled for 2 weeks for the text input. Text input is really slow, so you need to put new rules here.
- Navigation is another issue
- Scan-ability issues: Web users do scan websites at a faster rate but mobile users find it difficult to scan and then drill down to next page.
- Mobile visits are more task oriented, so they don’t want distractions or delays. They need THE information right away, need the information ‘in context.
- Mobile browsing is more cost sensitive.
How to achieve Mobile friendly websites
- Different URLs/domains: Not a big fan of it as even Google did not had answers to this question. If my website is ranking #1 in Google for a particular keyword and then if I make a new domain/page for mobile, will it rank the same, how do I tell Google that both these pages are same. Does canonical tag help? I am get to see a clear answer to it (I haven’t looked deeper into it though). Here you might want to redo the content as well.
- Alternate style sheets You can change the display based on alternative style sheets, mobile devices can pick the most appropriate style sheets and show the page accordingly.
- Changing displaying: By detecting the mobile device, we can deliver different content, this is possible when the pages are stored in data format (like CMS etc)
- Transcoding content I have explained it above. It makes the life a little easier.
Which way will you suggest?
I will see your answers, I have put pros and cons for various methods discussed above. What do you feel? For the time being, I have put
href="http://mowser.com/web/urlencode($_SERVER['HTTP_HOST'] . $_SERVER['REQUEST_URI']) " title="Mobile/PDA" />
code on the pages (See the pages source code). Actually, when a mobile user decides to visit a link from a list of search results to your site, Google (and other search engines) will first look at the landing page to observe if it’s a mobile friendly (mobile version) or not, and if it isn’t (which will be the case most of the time), will transcode that page for you into a mobile version. You don’t know, how Google will transcode, so you better provide your version of it.
My biggest question was: Show me the market
Until I am not sure of a significant demand, it’s hard to justify a large investment in time and effort creating a mobile web. I asked Google guys about a tool that can offer me the total search stats on mobile. They told us that for the time being it is not available in public. (May be we can expect some time later, when they will like to promote mobile ads in a better way)
Log files are like bikinis
If you look into your log and analytics, you will be disappointed. But remember statistics are like bikinis. What they reveal is suggestive, but what they conceal is vital. There is a very important message here, PEOPLE ARE TRYING. People are trying to use the websites through mobiles but they may not be happy enough. It’s a chicken-egg problem. So its better to keep moving towards the right future.
There are more mobile users than PCs
This will give us some more hints about the future. 3 billion Vs 600 million was the stats that I remember, 3 billion mobile users. So you better know what the future has for you. The cost of Data transfer on mobiles are coming down. Phones are becoming more web friendly (Hell with iphone revolution). Big players like Google, twitter, Yahoo, Youtube, flickr, facebook are luring more users towards mobile experiences with their mobile friendly websites.
Careful with Google’s Android for mobile apps
I think this is also another revolution in mobile development.
Semantic web – Device independent web
Remember Sir Timothy John Berners-Lee? (English computer scientist and MIT professor credited with inventing the World Wide Web. On 25 December 1990 he implemented the first successful communication between an HTTP client and server via the Internet with the help of Robert Cailliau and a young student staff at CERN) … Listed to his Ted’s meeting http://www.ted.com/talks/tim_berners_lee_on_the_next_web.html.
Which way will you suggest?
I will see your answers, I have put pros and cons for various methods discussed above. What do you feel?
really 1st time and possibly the last when i used it, i really didn’t liked it at all
but it is good for surfing in slow net connectivity. now i come to know that computationally it is the most expensive perhaps they are working on it to make it better….