More information for publishers | Search Engine Optimization

Developing mobile sites

We believe the mobile web is becoming increasingly important, but it's not always easy to know where to start. So, we've put together this page of tools available for developers of mobile content, to help ease the way.
Mobile markup

Mobile web pages come in several markup dialects, including WML, XHTML Basic, XHTML MP and cHTML. WML is an older standard that is supported by many browsers, and still widely used in some markets. cHTML is used primarily in Japan, but also some parts of Europe. XHTML Basic and XHTML MP are almost identical subsets of HTML, used globally, but particularly in North America and Europe. XHTML dialects are the newest and most expressive of markups, and are gaining usage. XHTML Basic 1.1 and XHTML MP 1.2 are a good choice for new development, but your choice will vary according to your target market.
Validation

Valid pages are likely to render correctly on more mobile devices.

Published mobile markup standards include:

* XHTML Basic 1.1
* XHTML MP 1.2
* cHTML
* WML 1.3

Validators include the following:

* Mobile-friendly XHTML Validator (W3C)
* Mobile-readiness checker (.mobi)
* mobileOK Basic Checker (TAW)
* WuRML (shadowplay.net)

Emulation

You may be confident that your page is valid XHTML or valid WML, but are you certain that it's going to look right on a real phone screen? Use an emulator to test your page, and avoid the hassle of buying them all.

* Phone Simulator (Openwave)
* Mobile emulator (.mobi)
* i-mode emulator (DoCoMo)
* User-Agent Switcher (Firefox plug-in)
* wmlbrowser (Firefox plug-in)
* XHTML Mobile Profile (Firefox plug-in)

Google resources

* About mobile sites and the Google index
* Best practices for mobile developers

Other resources

* W3C Mobile Web Best Practices
* .mobi Switch On! Guides
* The Wireless FAQ
* mobileOK Basic Tests
* WURFL (Wireless Universal Resource File)





First Click Free

If you offer subscription-based access to your website content, or if users must register to access your content, then search engines cannot access some of your site's most relevant, valuable content.

Implementing Google's First Click Free (FCF) for your content allows you to include your restricted content in Google's main search index. Our intention is to protect your content while allowing for its inclusion in Google's search index. First Click Free has two main goals:

* To include high-quality content in Google's search index, providing a better experience for Google users who may not have known that content existed.
* To provide a promotion and discovery opportunity for webmasters of sites with restricted content.

To implement First Click Free, you need to allow all users who find a document on your site via Google search to see the full text of that document, even if they have not registered or subscribed to see that content. The user's first click to your content area is free. However, once that user clicks a link on the original page, you can require them to sign in or register to read further.

In order to successfully crawl your site, Google needs to be able to crawl your content without filling out a registration form. The easiest way to do this is to configure your webservers not to serve the registration page to our crawlers (when the User-Agent is "Googlebot") so that Googlebot can crawl these pages successfully. You can choose to allow Googlebot access to some restricted pages but not others. More information about technical requirements.




Friend Connect

Note: Google Friend Connect is currently a beta release and will be available only to a limited number of site owners. To find out more, please visit http://www.google.com/friendconnect/.

Google Friend Connect lets you grow traffic by easily adding social features to your website and makes it more engaging for your visitors. By copying a snippet of code, you can equip your site with social features, enabling your visitors to log in with existing credentials and see who among their friends is already registered at that site. It also gives them one-click access to invite friends from their existing friends lists on other sites, such as Facebook or orkut.

With Google Friend Connect, you can make your site more engaging with social applications created by Google and the Open Social developer community. By adding rich, relevant, and interactive gadgets to your site, visitors will interact more actively with content on your site and spend more time on your site.

Enabling Friend Connect on your site won't impact your site's rankings in Google's search results.