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Yahoo’s Big Plan for the Social Web in 2010: Aggregate It

Dawson Barber — Sun, 17 Jan 2010 00:00:54 +0000

By Liz Gannes Jan. 15, 2010, 1:47pm

Important Points

Yahoo wants to aggregate its users’ activities from around the web.
At the center of Yahoo’s new open social strategy, is a product called Yahoo Updates.
Yahoo users’ primary mode is consumption.
The beauty of the Yahoo Updates product is that it isn’t really a product. And there won’t be any “big bang release.”

When Yahoo announced in early December that it would integrate with Facebook Connect, many considered it an admission of the long-reigning portal’s defeat in the battle to be the hub for people’s online identities. Om read the deal as a signal of Yahoo’s “technological irrelevan[ce],” and by extension, the “ultimate validation” of Facebook.

Cody Simms and Chris Yeh of Yahoo

Yahoo certainly made itself a target by pre-announcing a non-monetary integration set to “begin in the first half of 2010″ but offering little to no information as to what, exactly, that meant. However when it comes to the social web, the company does have a master plan, said Yahoo’s Cody Simms and Chris Yeh in a visit to GigaOM this week. (This follows previous posts I’ve written about Facebook and Google’s master plans for the social web in 2010.)

What Yahoo wants to do is aggregate its users’ activities from around the web. The Facebook Connect integration is the first in a string of coming deals with other social sites, said Simms, who is director of product management for the Yahoo application platform. It is also supposed to be a deeper form of content and user sharing than that available to those sites that simply integrate Facebook Connect on their own (but again, there’s nary a mockup to give some actual shape to the deal).

2009 was a behind-the-scenes building year for Yahoo’s social aggregation strategy, said Simms and Yeh, who’s head of the Yahoo developer network. The company has finally created a common platform layer for its many, many products — with more than 80 of them integrated since last April. It’s also allowed outside applications to come onto its platform, for instance Mint on My Yahoo, through OpenSocial.

And now, at the center of Yahoo’s new open social strategy, is a product called Yahoo Updates, which consists of activity streams shown in Yahoo Mail, on its front page, in Yahoo Messenger clients and on its toolbars. They are already functional; users receive a feed of updates from their contacts’ participation on Yahoo media properties when they comment or rate a story, for example. So when a normal user goes about their business chatting with their friends or reading their email, they’ll also see a stream of their friends’ social activities and updates taking place on Yahoo or elsewhere.

Yahoo users’ primary mode is consumption, said Simms, so that sort of activity will remain the core of Updates. But what the Facebook integration will do is enable that feed to be interactive — so a user could see a post from Facebook and comment back on it, for example. And a user’s Yahoo activity could show up in their Facebook stream. The concept and execution is quite similar to AOL’s Socialthing/Lifestream efforts.

What about integrating with Yahoo’s own services? This will happen in a number of ways:

In the next couple of months Yahoo plans to start allowing comments on its incredibly popular News, Finance and Sports sites. While that will undoubtedly set off unfathomable floods of comments on the story pages, you’ll get the ones from your contacts brought right to you.
Right now the people you see in your Updates are those with whom you have explicit Yahoo Connections. Next the company will add in your Mail and Messenger contacts. (Google is also planning to make use of existing social ties in its communications products.)
Yahoo will also try to make helpful content connections itself. So if an update says “Just saw ‘Avatar,’” Yahoo might drop in the appropriate movie trailer.

The beauty of the Yahoo Updates product is that it isn’t really a product. And there won’t be any “big bang release,” said Simms. Unlike similar efforts like FriendFeed or Cliqset, which are great at aggregating social activity, Updates doesn’t require users to do anything but go to their friendly and familiar Yahoo sites — something millions of people do every day. And Yahoo should be able to attract developers to build interesting things because it can offer them an tremendous amount of traffic.

But Yahoo will need to be really smart about integrating services in order to ensure that the combined user experience is better than going to all of them individually. And that’s going to be hard, because often someone else owns the social graph, users syndicate their updates all over the place, commenting and rating systems differ — in other words, the whole thing could end up an uninformative, repetitive muddle.

Photo courtesy of Yahoo Anecdotal via Flickr.

via Yahoo’s Big Plan for the Social Web in 2010: Aggregate It – GigaOM.

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Mobile Applications for Real Estate Go Beyond Search

Dawson Barber — Sat, 16 Jan 2010 13:41:16 +0000

The latest phone apps and mobile sites include social-networking features and even suggestions for the best places to shop.

By Alex Veiga

LOS ANGELES — Hunting for a home or apartment on the go seems to get easier with every new mobile-phone application.

The latest apps and mobile sites include social-networking features and even suggestions for the best places to shop.

Online real-estate search portals such as Trulia.com, Zillow.com and Redfin.com continue to have among the most popular software that can be downloaded to your phone. But even homebuilders and Better Homes & Gardens Real Estate have become mobile believers.

Apple’s iPhone currently has more than 100,000 applications for everything from a virtual Zippo lighter to a guitar tuner. (Full disclosure: The Associated Press operates the Mobile News Network, a multimedia news site for iPhones and other smart phones.)

The selections are more limited for shoppers with other types of phones and handsets powered by the Google’s Android or Microsoft’s Windows mobile operating system.

Still, just about any Web-enabled phone can now be used to search for real-estate listings these days, although the experience is still more satisfying on phones that link their GPS functions with the Web.

Here’s a brief look at some newcomers and new features:

Better Homes and Gardens Real Estate:

http://www.bhgrealestate.com/iphone

This application helps buyers categorize open houses they visit. Users can jot down notes on a house they’re viewing and take photos, which can be uploaded through the app to Facebook.

“That’s a package of features that we feel is really important for the new Echo Boomer consumer of today,” says Sherry Chris, the company’s president and chief executive.

The app also uses the iPhone’s GPS feature to compile housing-market data, such as median home-sale prices.

Currently the application is only available for the iPhone, but versions for BlackBerry and Droid phones will be out early next year.

KB Home:

http://www.kbhome.com

Homebuilders are vying for homebuyers’ attention, too. KB Home, which builds homes in 10 states and Washington, D.C., launched a search site in December designed to work better on mobile Web browsers.

Users can tailor searches down to a specific KB community. The no-frills portal shows basic details, including number of rooms, price range, address, photos or renderings, floor plans and contact information.

The site also lets users dial up the sales office directly from the browser.

Smarter Agent:

http://www.smarteragent.com/Smarter Agent was one of the pioneers with a mobile application in 2006 that helped buyers find information on recently sold homes. Last year, it rolled out an app called Homes for Sale, versions of which are now available for virtually all phones offered by all U.S. wireless carriers. The app also lets users search for properties for rent.

The software can be viewed on mobile-phone browsers, so users don’t necessarily have to have a fancy smart phone to use it.

The firm culls listings from publicly available data from the local Multiple Listing Services and individual brokerage firms. “We have all the listings in the local markets that we’re in,” said Eric Blumberg, president of Smarter Agent.

Next year, the firm plans to add interactive ads offering discounts from retailers.

Trulia Mobile:

http://www.trulia.com/mobileTrulia users can search for homes for sale with an iPhone app or via their mobile Web browser. This month, the firm updated its offerings to include larger property photos, improved map navigation and expanded home-search criteria. Users now can search for the most popular properties and those that have been reduced in price recently.

Meanwhile, on the iPhone 3GS and other video phones, an app called Layar taps Trulia’s data to let users see real-time information overlaid on their video screens as they pan from home to home.

Trulia plans to add rental properties to their database early next year. The company also is considering rolling out an app for Android phones.

“I could very well see that happening in 2010,” says Rob Cross, Trulia’s director of distribution.

Zillow Mobile:

http://mobile.zillow.com/Zillow launched an iPhone app in April, and created a version that works on mobile-phone Web browsers.

The tool give users an estimated value of all homes in its database, not just ones for sale. Users also can filter results, save searches, and get alerts when a new listing they might be interested in pops up.

The firm released another version in August, which sped up the map display and lets users share listings via e-mail.

Zillow has added rentals search, among other features.

“It’s a matter of time before more people will be looking for real estate on a mobile device than on a desktop,” says Spencer Rascoff, Zillow’s chief operating officer. “It’s inevitable.”

via Real Estate | Mobile applications for real estate go beyond search | Seattle Times Newspaper.

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High-Tech Paid-Search Spend Up 17% in 4Q09

Dawson Barber — Fri, 15 Jan 2010 03:30:24 +0000

Published on January 14, 2010

Paid-search spending worldwide by US-based high-tech and consumer-electronics advertisers grew 16.6% in the fourth quarter of 2009 over third-quarter levels, after having grown 7.7% in the third quarter, according to a study from Covario.

Due in large part to a growing demand for ad space by consumer electronics companies during the holiday season, growth exceeded the 10% increase forecast by Covario in the previous quarter.

As advertisers continue to reinvest in paid-search advertising after a contracted first half of the year, spending is forecast to grow 14-18% in 2010.

Below, findings from the 2009 year-end edition of Covario’s Global Search Spending Analysis, which examines paid-search spending by US-based global high-tech and consumer electronics firms.

The Rise of Bing

After the Yahoo-Bing deal in August 2009––whereby Yahoo agreed to standardize its technology on the Bing algorithm for both paid and organic search––spending on the network soared, doubling Bing’s (MSN’s) US market share from third quarter levels to 13.3% in the fourth quarter.

Fueled by a 158% in increase in 2009 search spending, Bing quintupled its market share in the US over the course of the year.

Google, which continues to dominate the search industry, recorded its lowest market share in the US in the three years of the study: 72%. Google also dominates foreign markets, particularly in the Europe, Middle East, and Africa (EMEA) region, where it recorded a 97% share in the high-tech sector.

Yahoo’s growth this year was fueled by its advertising campaigns, which generated annual ad spending 36.5% higher than 2008 levels.

However, Yahoo’s 2009 performance outside the US was weaker: Market share decreased 32.1% in the Asia-Pacific region, where its dominance is being challenged by Google, and its share in EMEA fell 74.6%.

Looking for solid, substantiated information about search engine marketing from the industry’s best resources? The 84-page Search Engine Marketing Factbook featuring 55 charts provides data on who is using search engines and how, as well as data on keywords, clicks, and paid search metrics. This search-related factbook consists of chapters 1 & 3 from the larger Digital Marketing Factbook a 144-page compilation of data and 110 charts that also covers email marketing and social media.

Cost-per-Click Rising

With increases in search spending that occurred in the fourth quarter, cost-per-click (CPC) rates increased as expected, nearly 15%, during the same period.

In 2010, CPCs are forecast to climb 10-15%, driven by increases in spending on brand-building or generic terms, which are more expensive on a CPC basis.

Other 2009 CPC Findings:

CPCs in the fourth quarter rose to $0.68 from $0.62 in the third quarter. In 2008, the average CPC was $1.04—and $1.19 in 2007. Prices are roughly 40% of where they were two years ago for same keywords.
Yahoo’s Dynamic Pricing program continues to drive large improvements in CPC for advertisers. Average CPC in the second half of 2009, since the service launched, is down 20–25%, making the clicks more affordable on the network.
Bing CPCs increased the most in the fourth quarter (to $0.72 from $0.41 from the previous quarter) due to the large increase in spending on the network driving prices higher.

Cost of Search Platforms

Google is the most price-effective search platform, according to Covario’s Acquisition Cost Index (ACI), which shows the relative cost per acquisition for the major search engines in the US:

Google’s average cost per acquisition is 9% below the market average in the fourth quarter. (This means that if the average cost of customer acquisition across all of paid search is $1 for a particular advertiser, then acquisitions on Google are $0.93.)
Bing has an average cost per acquisition that’s 75% higher than the industry average for a consistent set of conversion events measured across the high-tech industry. The ACI on Bing has been improving since the first quarter when the cost was 94% higher than the industry average.
Yahoo has been more expensive for advertisers throughout the year. In the first quarter, the ACI was 55% higher than the industry average and reached 91% by the fourth quarter.

About the data: The Covario Global Paid Search Spend Analysis is based on paid-search spending from US-based high-tech and consumer-electronics advertisers, and spans Q1 2007 through Q4 2009.

via High-Tech Paid-Search Spend Up 17% in 4Q09 : MarketingProfs.

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Bing’s Dip Could Be a Blip or Oncoming Trouble

Dawson Barber — Fri, 15 Jan 2010 01:11:05 +0000

On Jan. 13, Nielsen offered up its December 2009 data for the U.S. search market, finding that Google held 67.3 percent of that market, with Yahoo following at 14.4 percent and Bing in third with 9.9 percent.

Granted, this is just one research firm’s report, which will most likely vary from reports by other firms, but compare those December numbers against the ones from November 2009:

Google: 65.4 percent
Yahoo: 15.3 percent
Bing: 10.7 percent

According to Nielsen, both Yahoo and Bing seem to have lost ground to Google heading into the beginning of 2010. It could be a monthly fluctuation. But it could also be perceived as a potential problem for Microsoft, when you consider that November-December timeframe saw the company launch a whole host of new features for its search engine designed to bring it into more direct competitive alignment with Google.

If Yahoo’s percentage is also falling, then that potentially spells trouble for the success of the Microsoft-Yahoo search-and-advertising agreement, which was supposed to radically boost Bing’s market share in 2010.

Specifically, I’m talking about features such as the beta version of the new-and-improved Bing Maps, which introduced an option for viewing local terrain at eye level, and a new Bing Bar for Internet Explorer and Firefox.

In conversations with Microsoft spokespeople at the 2010 Consumer Electronics Show (CES), I was given the impression that Bing’s engineering team would continue to refine the search engine throughout 2010. No doubt some new features will be rolled out, as well. But if data from other research firms comes back with a similar dip for Bing, and if that incremental downward trend continues through the first months of the year, then Microsoft may need to think very hard about what it needs to do to continue the slow search-related momentum it managed to build over the course of last year.

Posted by Nicholas Kolakowski on January 13, 2010 5:10 PM

via Microsoft Watch – Advertising & Search – Bing’s Dip Could Be a Blip or Oncoming Trouble.

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Gartner: Not Long Before Mobile Internet Access Exceeds Access via PCs

Dawson Barber — Thu, 14 Jan 2010 21:20:04 +0000

If your website isn’t already optimized for access via mobile devices then it’s about time you started the process. According to new research from Gartner, mobile phones will overtake PCs as the most common website access devices in the world in the next three years.

by Helen Leggatt

Last year, The Nielsen Company found that the number of people accessing websites from mobile devices increased 34% YoY, from 42.5 million in July 2008 to 56.9 million in July 2009.

And the trend shows no signs of slowing.

By 2013 Gartner predicts that the total number of PCs in use will top 1.78 billion units across the globe. Within the same timeframe they predict the combined installed base of smart-phones and browser-enabled devices to exceed that with 1.82 billion units worldwide.

Businesses with websites not already optimized for smaller-screen formats will suffer as on-the-go consumers demand easy-to-navigate websites that give them access to the information they want with minimal clicks and at page load speeds the same, if not faster, than those of their PCs.

One way to do this is to formulate a “lite” version of your site and register it on a .mobi domain. That way you can configure the website so it contains smaller, or less, images, a clean and simple format and includes easy navigation and search to enable users to quickly find the information they want.

However, the number of different devices in use means that more and more mobile marketers are turning to automatic mobile device detection methods. In a nutshell, these detectors make a decision on what to serve based on how an incoming browser describes its capabilities.

Also consider the type of information an on-the-go user is likely to want and put this information at the top of the page. Most are going to be looking for a location or opening hours or even a map or menu – give this information to them first.

Hopefully, marketers will begin to realize that if they want to attract the next generation of users then an “Internet presence” alone isn’t enough. Today, a “mobile Internet presence” is important, too.

via Gartner: Not long before mobile Internet access exceeds access via PCs – Mobile Marketing – BizReport.

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November Sees Number of U.S. Videos Viewed Online Surpass 30 Billion for First Time on Record

Dawson Barber — Thu, 14 Jan 2010 21:11:16 +0000

If video does not already figure prominently into your online marketing efforts, the time has come.

RESTON, VA, January 5, 2010 – comScore, Inc. (NASDAQ: SCOR), a leader in measuring the digital world, today released November 2009 data from the comScore Video Metrix service, showing that more than 170 million U.S. Internet users watched online video during the month. Online video viewing continued to reach record levels in November with nearly 31 billion videos viewed during the month, and Google Sites accounting for 39 percent of all videos viewed online in the U.S.

Top 10 Video Content Properties by Videos Viewed

Google Sites continued to rank as the top U.S. video property in November as it delivered 12.2 billion videos viewed with YouTube.com accounting for nearly 99 percent of all videos viewed at the property. Hulu ranked second with 924 million videos viewed (3.0 percent) followed by Viacom Digital with 500 million (1.6 percent) and Microsoft Sites with 480 million (1.5 percent).

*Top U.S. Online Video Content Properties by Videos Viewed November 2009 Total U.S. – Home/Work/University Locations Source: comScore Video Metrix**
Property	Videos (000)	Share (%) of Video
Total Internet : Total Audience	30,986,670	100.0%
Google Sites	12,215,994	39.4%
Hulu	923,805	3.0%
Viacom Digital	499,497	1.6%
Microsoft Sites	479,638	1.5%
Yahoo! Sites	470,804	1.5%
Fox Interactive Media	446,460	1.4%
Turner Network	336,952	1.1%
CBS Interactive	287,588	0.9%
AOL LLC	227,797	0.7%
MEGAVIDEO.COM	201,199	0.6%

*Rankings based on video content sites; excludes video server networks. Online video includes both streaming and progressive download video.

Top 10 Video Content Properties by Viewers

More than 170 million viewers watched an average of 182 videos per viewer during the month of November. Google Sites attracted 129 million unique viewers during the month (94.7 videos per viewer), followed by Yahoo! Sites with more than 55 million viewers (8.5 videos per viewer) and Fox Interactive Media with 50 million viewers (8.9 videos per viewer). The average Hulu viewer watched 21.1 videos during the month, representing another all-time high for the property.

*Top U.S. Online Video Content Properties by Unique Viewers November 2009 Total U.S. – Home/Work/University Locations Source: comScore Video Metrix**
Property	Unique Viewers (000)	Average Videos per Viewer
Total Internet : Total Audience	170,647	181.6
Google Sites	129,037	94.7
Yahoo! Sites	55,145	8.5
Fox Interactive Media	49,981	8.9
CBS Interactive	47,460	6.1
Hulu	43,738	21.1
Microsoft Sites	43,280	11.1
Viacom Digital	42,572	11.7
FACEBOOK.COM	31,107	5.1
AOL LLC	30,992	7.4
Amazon Sites	27,169	2.6

*Rankings based on video content sites; excludes video server networks. Online video includes both streaming and progressive download video.

Top Video Ad Networks by Potential Reach

In November, Tremor Media ranked as the #1 video ad network with a potential reach of 85 million viewers, or 49.8 percent of the total viewing audience. Advertising.com Video Network ranked second with a potential reach of 80 million viewers (47.1 percent penetration) followed by YuMe Video Network with 73 million viewers (43.0 percent).

Top U.S. Online Video Ad Networks by Potential Reach of Unique Viewers November 2009 Total U.S. – Home/Work/University Locations Source: comScore Video Metrix
Property	Unique Viewers (000)	Viewer Penetration
Total Internet : Total Audience	170,647	100.0%
Tremor Media – Potential Reach	84,977	49.8%
Advertising.com Video Network – Potential Reach	80,403	47.1%
YuMe Video Network – Potential Reach	73,419	43.0%
SpotXchange Video Ad Network – Potential Reach	66,090	38.7%
Break Media Video Ad Network – Potential Reach	56,731	33.2%
BBE – Potential Reach	55,562	32.6%
BrightRoll Video Network – Potential Reach	49,754	29.2%
TidalTV – Potential Reach	39,944	23.4%
ScanScout Network – Potential Reach	33,531	19.6%
Digital Broadcasting Group (DBG) – Potential Reach	26,283	15.4%

Other notable findings from November 2009 include:

The top video ad networks in terms of their actual reach delivered were: Tremor Media Video Network with 20.0 percent penetration of online video viewers, BBE with 17.5 percent, and BrightRoll Video Network with 16.6 percent.
84.8 percent of the total U.S. Internet audience viewed online video.
The average online video viewer watched 12.2 hours of video.
128.1 million viewers watched more than 12 billion videos on YouTube.com (94.3 videos per viewer).
38.6 million viewers watched 333.4 million videos on MySpace.com (8.6 videos per viewer).
The average Hulu viewer watched 21.1 videos, totaling 2.1 hours of videos per viewer.
The duration of the average online video was 4.0 minutes.

via November Sees Number of U.S. Videos Viewed Online Surpass 30 Billion for First Time on Record – comScore, Inc.

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comScore Releases December 2009 Ranking of Top Ad Networks

Dawson Barber — Thu, 14 Jan 2010 20:36:23 +0000

AOL Advertising Ranks #1 Among Ad Networks, Followed by Yahoo! Network and Google Ad Network

RESTON, VA, January 14, 2010 – comScore, Inc. (NASDAQ: SCOR), a leader in measuring the digital world today reported the top 15 ad networks based on their reach among U.S. Internet users in December 2009. The ranking showed that AOL Advertising remains the top ad network, reaching 187 million U.S. Internet users, or 91 percent of the total audience, followed by Yahoo! Network (180.9 million) and Google Ad Network (178.1 million). The fastest growing ad network by audience reach among the top 15 was Microsoft Media Network U.S., which grew 31 percent versus year ago, followed by Collective Network (up 22 percent) and Audience Science (up 16 percent).

Top 15 Ad Networks December 2009 vs. December 2008 Total U.S. – Home/Work/University Locations Source: comScore Media Metrix
	Total Unique Visitors (000)
	Dec-2008	Dec-2009	% Change
Total Internet : Total Audience	190,650	205,709	8
AOL Advertising	173,804	187,023	8
Yahoo! Network	165,879	180,909	9
Google Ad Network	157,131	178,134	13
ValueClick Networks	159,420	170,774	7
Microsoft Media Network US	126,158	165,470	31
Specific Media	153,079	165,230	8
FOX Audience Network	N/A	156,981	N/A
24/7 Real Media	142,448	155,856	9
Collective Network	126,294	153,905	22
interCLICK	137,076	148,989	9
Tribal Fusion	139,778	147,169	5
AudienceScience (formerly Revenue Science)	126,261	146,428	16
Traffic Marketplace	147,024	144,115	-2
Adconion Media Group	142,133	141,235	-1
Turn, Inc	123,150	138,297	12

“Ad networks continue to be a powerful mechanism for delivering a large audience online, with eight different networks reaching at least 75 percent of the entire U.S. online population,” said comScore senior vice president Jeff Hackett. “Increasingly, however, ad networks are improving their capability for reaching more targeted audiences as well, which delivers enhanced value to advertisers and helps sustain higher CPMs for the channel. 2010 should bring us continued innovation and performance from this growing online sector.”

via comScore Releases December 2009 Ranking of Top Ad Networks – comScore, Inc.

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Optimization for Google Mobile Search

Dawson Barber — Tue, 12 Jan 2010 17:33:12 +0000

January 8th, 2010 by John | Posted under Google, Guides, Search Engines

Statistics from early 2009 claimed that iPhone users accounted for some two-thirds of all mobile browsers. Now, while that particular statistic has been questioned and debated, there is little doubt about the effect of the iPhone on mobile browsing. The advent of the Google Android phone will only make mobile web surfing more mainstream than it already is. When it comes to optimizing your web content for Google Mobile Search, there are a number of things you can do.

Some people say that you should make a mobile version of your regular website, while other say that you should optimize your existing site for mobile browsing. But whether it’s your normal site optimized for mobile, or a new mobile version of your site, there are steps that anyone wanting to rank high in mobile search results should do.

Step one is to make sure that your website is mobile compliant. This means that your pages are formatted for people browsing the web with their phones. Mobile browsing implies a lack of time to complete a search. Perhaps instead of mobile “browsing,” the term should be something more like mobile “hunting.” But since mobile users are also short on screen space, the pages should be designed to cater to this reality. Do you know what your site looks like on a mobile web platform? If not, do a mobile search to see. You’ll notice that a lot of your site’s goodies are unavailable. But this makes some choices all the more obvious.

The most important information on your site should be at the top.
Your site needs to be easily navigable from a mobile platform.
Font sizes need to be usable
Your page should look attractive on a mobile phone browser screen.

If these things don’t check out, then you need to make some changes to get your site ready for what many experts see as the coming tsunami of mobile searching.

Why should you go to the trouble? The current industries seeing the most growth in mobile searches are business, entertainment, and travel. According to the Mobile Optimization Association, mobile searchers tend to be young, high income professionals with promising careers, or, to put it more bluntly, people with more disposable income than usual.

Web pages for mobile browsing are created in XHTML or WML. They must be W3C compliant. W3C stands for “World Wide Web Consortium” and sets guidelines about how a web page should be structured. They publish best practice design principles for webmasters. Without going into the nuts and bolts of getting your site to be W3C compliant, you should know that there is a W3C Code Validator at http://validator.w3.org/ that anyone can use to ensure that your site renders on all the major browsers and platforms in a similar manner.

Before deciding exactly how to optimize your site for mobile, there are a few things to know about the people who use mobile browsers. First of all, they tend to use the same search engine on their mobile device as they use on their PC. Even though there are 234 million wireless subscribers in the U.S., only 10% use mobile search (which is still 23 million people). Adoption rates of mobile browsing are much higher in Europe. Finally, mobile searchers are goal-oriented: they want to get the info and get out. They don’t tend to browse or surf.

A few general practices for optimizing your site are:

Keep your content brief
Use brief, custom titles
For mobile stats, check out MMetrics.com
Mobile sites need to be as simple as possible to ensure compatibility among all mobile browser software.

There are two main opinions when it comes to optimizing your site for Google Mobile: 1) Optimize your existing site; and 2) Create a new mobile-only site. Both approaches have their advantages and disadvantages, which we’ll go into next.

Optimization of an Existing Site

If you want to optimize your existing site, make sure that in mobile search your pages are independent of device. Search results on mobile devices use a different data set than web browsers do.

Use external CSS style sheets because they limit how much code has to be downloaded and are helpful in scaling up or down for different screen sizes. You can have a separate style sheet for hand held devices.

Use text links rather than images. Images may not download at all and will increase page loading times. Here are a few do’s and don’ts for optimizing an existing site for mobile search.

Put navigation buttons below content. People don’t like having to scroll down every time a page loads.
Don’t use flash or frames on your pages. They’ll either be unsupported by mobile browsers, or they’ll slow everything down.
Avoid pop-ups
Advertise your site as mobile compatible and get links from directories and mobile sites
Put the prefix tel: before a phone number in a link so that the mobile device can call it with one click
Put your business into your Google Local index so it will automatically be listed in Google Voice Local Search.
Since most users don’t scroll on mobile browsers, ranking in the top three results is a very big deal, so do what you can to optimize your site in the result listings
Google allows you to submit a separate XML sitemap for mobile. It’s a good idea.
Optimize for mobile ASAP to get into the results early on. One report says that a search for “McDonalds” on Google mobile has a mobile-friendly page from the BBC as the top result.

Creating a Mobile-Only Site

The argument for doing this is that mobile users are goal oriented rather than simply browsing. Some sites have taken to using a subdomain approach rather than using a separate domain like .mobi. That would give your mobile site a name like mobile.yourdomainname.com. It allows you to retain the “brand” of the top level domain rather than having to rebuild branding for a new domain name. Here are some tips for optimizing a mobile-only version of your site.

Information should be three clicks or less from the home page.
Organize navigation logically for mobile users: place likely popular buttons first, using text links. Put navigation buttons underneath content to keep users from having to scroll each time they click a new page.
Make word links short to keep them from taking up too much valuable screen space.
Have a sitemap for your mobile-only page.
Use optimized heading tags, just like with your standard web pages.
Test and validate your mobile site using simulators like Skweezer and validators like .Mobi Validator or W3C Mobile Web Validator.
Have a link-building campaign specifically for your mobile-only website.
Have social book marking and tagging functions on your mobile site.
Use the tel: prefix in phone number links so users can call the phone number in one click.

via Optimization for Google Mobile Search.

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