A 12-hour flight allowed me to catch up on some important reading, including the Mobile Media subscription-only newsletter from Informa that I get via snail-mail. (Many thanks to Guillermo Escofet for bringing his extremely interesting exposè to my attention!)

It’s an eye-opening article and drives home the point that Google & Co. somehow fail to include WAP sites in their search results. It’s a complaint I’ve heard often, particularly from WAP site owners whose livelihoods are dependent upon how searchable their content is. But Guillermo has gone the extra mile and tested mobile search engines in the U.K. to see just how they perform. He’s also documented the results in a detailed table.

[FYI: T-Mobile and Vodafone use Google (T-Mobile uses Medio Systems white-label for its t-zones portal, but that wasn't part of the test); Orange, 3 and O2 use Yahoo.]

It wouldn’t be fair to reveal the findings in their entirety, so here’s a high-level summary:

• Google and Yahoo off-portal Fixed Internet results were spot-on in terms of relevance. (After all, Internet search is what they were designed to do and that legacy makes it patently difficult to switch gears and excel in mobile from day one. As one content aggregator put it: “Google and Yahoo: They talk mobile but think Web.”)

• Off-portal WAP results were a no-show and poor at best. From the findings: “Results were consistently off-topic, often absurdly so.”

In a nutshell, Mobile Media did uncover some serious WAP search problems and shortcomings, and confronted the operators with the evidence. The operators claimed to be unaware of the problems; even more shocking is their indifference. A Vodafone spokesman said: “We’re offering the Internet on your mobile, and from the web results you highlight, we are satisfied that users are getting the information they want.” Translated: delivering fixed Internet content via mobile is the priority; WAP isn’t.

And here’s a quote that speaks for itself – shame we don’t have the source. (It has to do with the fact that Google on the Vodafone portal lists Live search results, followed by Web, with WAP last.) The source says opinions are divided on this one. “You’ve got people at operational level saying Google is a shambles, but at board level, they want to keep these brands onboard.”

Yahoo and Google acknowledge the problem and point out it’s an issue connected with the overall difficulties of indexing WAP content. Put another way, WAP sites don’t come up short because the search engines have chosen to purposely ignore them or otherwise lack commitment to listing them among search results. But you have to wonder since WAP site owners have told me personally they have done all they can to make sure their sites are properly marked up. This point is made in the article as well.

To be clear, neither the article – nor I – is pointing fingers at search engines. The problem is more complex and has to do with a lack of standards on how to present content and make it searchable. And let’s not forget the lack of made-for-mobile content and websites in the first place.

Maybe the core issue here is the one no one wants to talk about: the state of the mobile Web. Is it going to be a made-for-mobile Web that exists in an almost parallel universe next to the fixed Internet? Or are we going to settle for transcoded Internet sites on our mobile phones? The jury is out – and my guess is, it will be a bit of both. But therein lies the problem, rejigging Internet content is an approach that will likely leave WAP sites out of the picture, or at least present them low in the list of search results, for a long time to come.

This entry was posted on Thursday, October 18th, 2007 at 8:05 pm and is filed under Mobile Content, Mobile Search. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.