Google Mobile Search

Google dives deeper into the mobile area. It seems there is a new GoogleBot that spiders the web and optimize the content for mobile phones. The Google spider has the User Agent; "Nokia6820/2.0 (4.83) Profile/MIDP-1.0 Configuration/CLDC-1.0 (compatible; Googlebot-Mobile/2.1; +http://www.google.com/bot.html)".

"Google Web Search on mobile phones allows users to search all the content in the Google index for desktop web browsers. Because this content isn't written specifically for mobile phones and devices and thus might not display properly, Google automatically translates (or "transcodes") these pages by analyzing the original HTML code and converting it to a mobile-ready format. To ensure that the highest quality and most useable web page is displayed on your mobile phone or device, Google may resize, adjust, or convert images, text formatting and/or certain aspects of web page functionality." (from Google).

The problem is that, most of the times, Google removes ads from the sites and that makes the publishers angry.

You can test the transcoded version of a page online, if you go to http://www.google.com/gwt/n?u=[url address] and replace [url address] with the URL of the site. For example, CNN (mobile version).

Google has been partnering with cell phone hardware manufacturers: Sony Ericsson, Motorola, Benq. For example, Motorola phones will feature a Google button for direct access to Google's site.

As for content, Google delivers mobile search (web search, image search, local search), news, personalized homepage, Gmail mobile, Google Talk for Blackberry.