For years, journalists have been saying, “This is the year of the mobile Web.” Finally, they’re right: the mobile Web has arrived.
This past year, dotMobi – the company behind the .mobi domain designed to help consumers find sites that works on all mobile phones – reviewed the largest top-level Internet domains and found a 700% growth in the number of mobile Web sites in the past year, proving that a revolution in mobile content is here.
When dotMobi first performed this study in 2008, 150,000 mobile Web sites were available. Now, dotMobi counts approximately 1.1 million mobile site addresses in the world; that means 0.8 percent of all domains are likely to have mobile-friendly content.
As a comparison, in 1998 the Online Computer Library Center counted 1.46 million PC-based Web sites across all TLDs. Today, there are 77.4 million live ".com" and ".net" Web sites. Given the strong growth of the mobile Web in the past year, a similar – or even faster – long-term deployment of mobile content is likely compared to that of the PC-based Web a decade ago.
Further, the study showed .mobi is emerging as the de facto standard for naming mobile Web sites. A majority – 23 percent – of all mobile sites using one naming convention choose “.mobi” rather than “m.” or “mobile.” or “/mobile”.
Among the main reasons that brands are using the .mobi domain is that it offers stronger mobile search engine performance than any other naming convention. Unlike an “m.” or “/mobile” name, .mobi provides an entry in the Internet zone files, which is where search engines begin their crawls. That means quicker discovery and wider distribution for a mobile site.
Thousands of high-end brands are actively using their .mobi name, including Blackberry, Coca-Cola, Disney, Facebook, Nike, Reuters, Smirnoff, even Dolce and Gabbana.
And smaller businesses are going .mobi, too. Unlike bigger businesses who may have budget for a dedicated mobile Web development team, smaller businesses are finding unique, cost-effective solutions like Instant Mobilizer.
Instant Mobilizer works by creating a mobile-ready “mirror” of an existing Web site. The process is completely automated, and creates a site based on the brand and style that a small business is using on their PC Web site. Business owners continue to maintain their PC Web site as they do already, and Instant Mobilizer creates a version that works on all mobile phones, not just iPhones and Blackberrys.
And Instant Mobilizer adds mobile-friendly features like turning phone numbers into “click-to-call” links and store addresses into Google Map links.
Best of all, Instant Mobilizer is free from EuroDNS. All you need is a .mobi address so that customers know they’re getting mobile-ready content. And it works with your new or existing .mobi domain.
Visit the Instant Mobilizer preview at EuroDNS and test your own site. Once you see how mobile users will see it, just register your .mobi domain, being sure to select the “Mobilize It” option.
With 2.4 billion mobile phone users in the world – an audience that’s bigger than the combined number of PCs and televisions in the world – an investment in a .mobi domain and a mobile-friendly site with Instant Mobilizer makes good financial sense in these times.
Melanie Delannoy