Mobile domains
One area which I feel will become a huge market over the next few years is the integration of mobile technology in the domain name industry. Therefore hedging my bets, I have decided to start a regular post about Mobile Domains to keep you up to date with the movements in the mobile industry across the areas of mobile marketing, mobile search engine optimisation and mobile technology in relation to the domain name industry.
We have had dot mobi domains now since 2006, but have they turned heads…not really. Has the power of mobile even been touched upon in the world of domaining. NO WAY!
The real head turner will now be how the development of existing domain extentions will be implemented to maximise the exposure of a website across the mobile internet. Contrary to popular belief the two worlds of desktop internet and mobile internet are two completely different species which must have two separate domain strategies inplace, but at the same time, two strategies which complement each other seamlessly.
I WOULD LOVE TO HEAR YOUR COMMENTS ON MOBILE DOMAINS, ESPECIALLY WITH REFERENCE TO THE AREAS OF MOBILE DOMAINING, MOBILE SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMISATION AND MOBILE MARKETING
Any information received will be collated and used in my new weekly slot, Monday’s Mobile Domains. Blimey, my weekly posts are starting to fill up, need to get some structure now. I already have SEO Sunday, now Mobile Monday and of course the undisputed Top Ten Tuesday. Only 4 more days to go, its gonna keep me busy, but what an exciting idea to explore. Eventually I will upgrade from blog to a full all singing all dancing site, but not until I have the solid foundations in place for global domain domination!
Cheerio for now!
Gary, King of Mobile Domaining! Mwah ha ha ha haaaaa!
9 Comments to Mobile domains
Leave a Reply
Hi Gary,
I agree with you that when .mobi domains came out they didn’t really turn any heads and everyone, myself included all said that it was better to have your mobile domain as mydomain.com, or even m.mydomain.com instead of buying mydomain.mobi
However, with Mobile Operators (e.g. Vodafone) using transcoding services (e.g. Novarra) – mobile sites are in real danger of being “optimised” by the transcoders.
Note: the kind of optimisation which is performed is normally a) breaking your mobile site so it doesn’t work on mobiel phones and b) if it doesn’t break it – then it also adds 3rd party adverts to your site so that someone else can get revenue from your site.
Transcoders are supposed to honour both the m. prefix and the .mobi domain but there have been notable examples in the past where the only sites which did not suffer from a new transcoder deployment were .mobi domains.
Therefore, I have been recommending to all my clients for a couple of years now to only run their mobile internet sites on .mobi’s …
With kind regards,
Tom
Hi Tom,
Thanks for the comment, very insightful, could it be then fair to assume that the value of a dot mobi domain name is therefore reliant on whether it is developed into a mobile site and marketed accordingly.
Many domainers are under the impression that .mobi is a domain extension with little use.
It sounds like the .mobi extension certainly has its benefits in this area?
Hi Gary,
If you have a .mobi domain and put a mobile site on it and submit the sitemap to google mobile then google should list this as the mobile version of your brand and thus available for users searching on mobile. Personally I would recommend all brands have both their main .com etc website and also create at the very least a small branding page on their .mobi domain so that their details are discoverable via mobile search… In these times I think everyone should be doing whatever they can to make their brand available on as many channels as possible.
With kind regards,
Tom
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