Review of mobile search engines
21 December 2005
When the urge hits us and we have to find a piece of information about life, universe and everything, we must get it right there and then. Maybe it is the name of the UN Secretary before Kofi Annan, or the address of the nearest Wi-Fi hotspot, but we want to know it and fast. Since we always have a phone with us and it can connect to the Internet, we decided to give it a test and see if a phone can be used to find information.
Phones that can access the Internet have been around for a few years, but it hasn't been easy to use them to search information the way we are used to on our computers. Some experts blame slow wireless networks and poor network coverage, but we believe the reason is that the browser software products haven't been good enough and search engines haven't paid any attention to small screens.
Now, the situation has changed as the major search engines have introduced search pages specifically designed for small screens. You can use practically any phone or PDA that comes with an Internet (HTML or XHTML) browser, WAP, or iMode browser to access the search engines. You must have data service activated for your phone subscription plan because the phone browser software will use GPRS, EDGE, UMTS, CDMA or EV-DO (depending on your network) communication technology to transfer information.
AOL Moble Search
The AOL search page for mobile devices opens up quickly and its minimal design is nice on a small screen. You simply type in a search phrase, hit the search button and wait for the results. When the chunk of information arrives, you have to scroll through annoying 'sponsored results' before you can view the actual search results. This feature alone may make some impatient mobile phone users look elsewhere for a search service.
In addition to search, AOL has separate sections for Shopping and Yellow Pages that both list results only for North America.
Answers.com
Answers.com is built on a nice idea: it tries to find an answer for you, instead of providing thousands of links to a topic you want to know about.
The mobile search on Answer.com works well and we got an immediate answer to our search for 'Kofi Annan'. We didn't have to follow links from page to page – the information appeared right there on the first screen. However, another search phrase like 'photo album' produced a description of a rock band. Surely a fine band, but we wanted to learn about photo albums where we can send our pictures from the camera phone. Technically, the Answers.com mobile search works well, but it is pure luck if the phrase you are looking for happens to be in their database.
Google Mobile Search
Google trusts the familiar www.google.com address and that's fine with us, it is easy to remember. If you want to be sure that you access a page designed for the small screen, you can type in www.google.com/xhtml (we used this for our test). iMode phone owners can logon at www.google.com/imode, and WAP browser users can go to www.google.com/wml.
Google mobile search displays a simple screen with the search box and four options to narrow down the search: Web, Images, Local, and Mobile Web (beta). The 'Web' option is selected by default, but if you want, you can get results specifically designed for a small screen by choosing Mobile Web.
We entered our search phrase, hit search and that was it. The Google Mobile Search just works, delivering results quickly and without extra load (as the popularity of using mobile devices to access the Internet grows, ads inevitably will follow some day). Local search is useless outside the selected areas Google believes are local.
Technorati Mobile
Technorati is a specialized search engine that's focused on tracking the popularity of blogs and searching information specifically from blogs. If you want to know what people around the world think, for example, about Kofi Annan, give Technorati a try.
We found the Technorati mobile search useful and straightforward to use. It delivered exactly what we expected: links to blog entries and links to news sources. Come to think of it, so many blogs publish nothing else than blurbs and links to original news stories that searching blogs may be the fastest way to find news on a hot topic.
Yahoo! Mobile Search
mobile.yahoo.com/search for SMS search
wap.oa.yahoo.com for web search
A funny thing happened after we started testing mobile search. In the beginning, Yahoo mobile search was accessible on a browser and delivered accurate results. Later, when we wanted to take screen shots of the service, the mobile search page had disappeared and Yahoo was pushing SMS services instead. The WAP address, however, still works and delivers results quickly.
There are more search services and directory listing services available on the Internet for mobile devices, but we didn't find them very useful. Some of them require you to send text messages with keywords (you are supposed to remember a plethora of keywords, for crying out loud) to the service that responds with the results. Often these services charge a premium price for the text messages.
When you use a browser software program on your phone for searching information, you must pay for the airtime according to your data communication plan. In many cases, a number of minutes or megabytes is included in monthly subscription packages, but check with your network provider.
Nokia Mobile Search application
Smartphones are such clever machines, that you can extend their functionality by downloading new applications on them without even having to leave the comfort of your chair. Nokia has produced search software for Symbian OS/S60 smartphones that you can download for free from the Nokia mobile search site.
The software lets you enter your search phrase, which is passed on to a search engine (Yahoo at the moment, but the menu options reveal the software has been designed for future enhancements) and then displays the results as a very compact list of titles. You select an item from the list and the software immediately shows you a few sentences from the web page. This is often enough for you to know if you found what you were looking for. Ifyou scroll down and click Browse, the application takes you to the actual web page. and the application lets you choose which local information sources it accesses.
None of the major search engines could produce satisfactory results with their local search. If we happen to be in Paris, or in Hong Kong, we want to see the results for that neighborhood – not Manhattan. A better approach to local search is Nokia's software that offers you choices for local information providers.
Local search aside, searching for information on a phone works fine. Our favorite mobile search accessed on a phone browser is Google. It works the way we expect a search engine to do: deliver results quickly and accurately. We also liked Technorati mobile search, it provides another angle to the vast pool of information on the Internet. The Nokia Mobile Search has the most potential for useful features and it is the most user-friendly service, but available for S60 smartphones only.
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