The Art of SEO

Others: Mobile, Video/Multimedia Search

Mobile and video search are two areas experiencing rapid growth. Each has its own challenges and requires a unique approach.

Mobile Search

Mobile search optimization is a growing market. Outside the United States, where mobile device usage has a much higher level of penetration, this discipline is already very important. Within the United States, mobile device usage is growing rapidly, so it is in the process of becoming very important there as well. Figure 8-18 shows an example of a search result on an iPhone.

Figure 8-18. Search: different on mobile devices

Improved mobile-web-user interfaces on mobile devices are a big factor in the growth of mobile search. iPhone users conduct an average of 50 times more searches on Google than on Google’s nearest competitor (http://blogs.computerworld.com/iphone_users_search_google_5000). The disproportionate usage of Google from iPhones is in no small part due to the exceptional ease of use and easily accessible Google search, and with the Google Mobile app, you can even search with your voice.

Google Mobile employs a different spider than Googlebot does, with the user agent string "Googlebot-Mobile". Google Mobile’s ranking algorithms are separate as well. When Googlebot-Mobile crawls your site, it will let your web server know that it prefers to receive the mobile version of that page by sending an HTTP Accept ...