Mobile Sites and Google Mobile Crawlers
There are many reasons why mobile sites are not only important but a necessity to compete in the digital arena these days. Today, let’s look at one aspect of mobile sites and Google mobile crawlers.
Google’s Mobile Crawlers (User-Agents)
When viewing server logs for a mobile web site last month, we saw that 5 Google mobile crawlers had stopped by to visit. Not only had Smartphone Googlebot-Mobile crawled the site, but we also noted that a number of other Google mobile search crawlers had visited: Feature phone, Adwords Mobile and simple Google Mobile. We feel that there’s evidence that Google’s trying to cover the entire spectrum of mobile devices by deploying these multiple user-agents.
In Mid December 2011, Google introduced Smartphone Googlebot-Mobile. This was added to complement the previous feature phone user-agents and is directed at mobile devices with a fully featured web browser. As tablet devices continue to grow in popularity, it is probably safe to say that there will soon be a tablet specific user-agent for devices such as the iPad and PlayBook.
For those who are curious and have access to check their own server logs, below are the Googlebot-Mobile crawlers that we are aware of to date:
Feature Phone User-Agents:
- SAMSUNG-SGH-E250/1.0 Profile/MIDP-2.0 Configuration/CLDC-1.1 UP.Browser/6.2.3.3.c.1.101 (GUI) MMP/2.0 (compatible; Googlebot-Mobile/2.1; +http://www.google.com/bot.html)
- DoCoMo/2.0 N905i(c100;TB;W24H16) (compatible; Googlebot-Mobile/2.1; +http://www.google.com/bot.html)
Smartphone User-Agent:
- Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU iPhone OS 4_1 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/532.9 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/4.0.5 Mobile/8B117 Safari/6531.22.7 (compatible; Googlebot-Mobile/2.1; +http://www.google.com/bot.html)
Adwords Mobile User-Agent:
- AdsBot-Google-Mobile (+http://www.google.com/mobile/adsbot.html) Mozilla (iPhone; U; CPU iPhone OS 3 0 like Mac OS X) AppleWebKit (KHTML, like Gecko) Mobile Safari
Simple Mobile User-Agent:
- Googlebot-Mobile (compatible; Googlebot-Mobile/2.1; +http://www.google.com/bot.html)
It’s easy to see that Google views mobile web browsing as an important component of search that is here to stay. For more information relating to Google Mobile and other Google website crawlers, visit this great resource.
At IP, Our Offices Are Our Castles
You may not know this, but today is Clean Up Your Room Day. In honor of this illustrious holiday, several of us have decided that it’s time to clean up our offices and make sure we’re organized. Everyone knows that having a clean office and desk is a good idea, but it’s even more important when you realize that having a clean and organized desk and office positively affects your productivity, mood, professionalism and overall morale. Nothing is worse than sitting down at a cluttered desk on a Monday morning in an office that you don’t enjoy being in.
We decided it was time. Time to make our offices a place where we enjoy going. Time to get ourselves organized and ready for mind-bending productive spells. Time to make our offices IP-worthy.
Mission: Accepted.
So, we have a couple of things going on over here. There are a few of us who have taken on the challenge to clean up our offices and get organized. And just for fun, we’ve taken some before and after photos.
Submission #1: Bil (Search Team)
Bil’s office in the before photo looks an awful lot like my favorite college professor’s office. The after picture makes me wonder if his back hurt after moving all those books around.
Submission #2: Crystal (HR)
Her desk was taking on a life of its own until she reminded it who’s boss:
For some IPers, though, just cleaning and organizing the desk and office wasn’t enough. We needed a bigger challenge. One that would reward us for months on end. So, in addition to our already busy work weeks, a few of us have taken on a challenge to re-do our office space and complete a full makeover.
For a mission this dangerous, we needed support. That’s why we enlisted the help of Kim Ausbury of Staged & Styled. She took each of our participants on a journey that allowed them to decide what style they really wanted in their office and then make a complete transformation.
Starting next week, we will be telling you more about the project itself and you will see the transformations that three IPers underwent in their workspaces. Once all three are revealed, we will let you tell us who did the best job and ultimately be declared our winner.
Until then, we wish everyone a happy and organized rest of the week.
Content Creation Tools We Like: Inbound Writer
I discovered an intriguing content creation tool, Inbound Writer, (via John Jantsch’s Duct Tape Marketing blog) that I wanted to share with you. It is very useful especially if you have a theme in mind but need some research and trending information to help you flesh out your articles and blog posts.
Inbound Writer offers a streamlined interface that helps you research your topic in real time as you write. It allows you to tap into social buzz and online popularity for keywords relating to your theme. I’ve used it several times, and I find it is a good tool to get focused on your topic. You create your documents in the Content Lab, and Inbound Writer actually, in my tests, made the writing process a bit faster as I could glance into the right hand pane and see lists of potential keywords to incorporate, without leaving the screen. Once I finish an article using Inbound Writer I like to cross check some of its relevant term recommendations with other keyword research tools we use here. It scores your article against all of its available methods to improve your piece; based on best practices for increasing engagement and online reach.
I like the tool’s ‘Topic Buzz’ feature which allows you to see what’s trending now for your article topic. These trending articles show the authors’ Klout score as well, so that is one indication of their influence.
This tool has many more features that I will continue to explore, and its focus on writing for reach, engagement and conversion is compelling. I’ve added it to my arsenal of tools to help our customers achieve their content marketing goals.
Special note: Inbound Writer is a secure cloud-based application that provides daily backups and secure access to your documents in any web browser.
