WillR

I've just been running a number of mobile friendly and mobile unfriendly sites through the Google Gomo mobile website tester:
GoMo: An Initiative From Google

What I found is that as long as you answer the 4 questions as though your site is mobile friendly your site will still score a 3/4 or 4/4 for mobile friendliness... regardless of how mobile friendly your site actually is.

It appears the only thing Google actually checks is the page load speed... everything else is up to the answers you give. They say a reasonable page load speed is 5 seconds so even that is quite easy to achieve for a lot of mobile unfriendly sites.

All in all I am not very impressed with it. The reports it spits out are quite nice but I would never recommend sending a potential customer their to check the mobile friendliness of their current website. You are going to have a much better result using the official W3C validator.

http://validator.w3.org/mobile/

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Jay Moreno

went through the exact same process Will and came to the exact same conclusion... i think what they are doing is very misleading

syncjam

That's weird. You'd think G would slant the results the OTHER way, so as to get more gomo business!!

SirThomas

Also, the representation how your site looks like on mobile phone was incorrect... it simply shrank the site to fit the online screen. Perhaps, by now, they already fixed it to show how it really looks?


T

Pmac721

I also was disappointed with the GoMo tester. Was really surprised that the questions had so much of an effect on the test results.

Although the report looks good it seems like the whole purpose is to drive traffic to their list of approved vendors. I wonder how much work this will really generate for them?

justinc21

I was hoping for far more from GoMo. I put a couple of wordpress sites in that I have built that I know I haven't yet optimised for mobile, answered their questions, and as Will states, it gave me a result that wasn't correct.
I thought maybe there was more to it, so had a look around the site and couldn't really see anything else on there that made me want to go back and visit it anytime soon.
Are they planning any updates to it, or is that it?

tonyserugatonyseruga

Google Gomo helps business go mobile i can't say it is useless it's all how you utilize it GoMo allows users to enter their website’s URL into something Google calls a Gomometer the best thing is this is totally free.

DimitrisL

It is a big issue to have Google in the mobile game. if they take it seriously they will be a threat for everyone. what they lack and it seems it will take them some time to understand is the human approach on selling such customized services to small and medium sized firms.. by still they dominate the online space so I think even though their GoMo initiative might disappoint now, they have the cash to fix it and even determine where the industry will go.
As a newbie in the mobile marketing area, I think it is positive to have Google investing some effort/cash on it as it will help us promote the mobile concept.

scarab

I found GOMO useless as well. Half the time it won't even load.

I think this is just another Big G thing to push adsense and adwords to the mobile channel. With Google recognizing and giving mobile a big push it does make consumers & business people more aware and create the 'need' for people like us. However the clients that I build mobile sites for will not be putting google ads on their sites. After all, that is Google's only reason for doing this.

jbtooloo

Agree completely!

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SirThomas

Why aren't they using some form of mobile phone emulator to show how your site really looks like on mobile devices? Instead, they shrink your site to fit the phone screen? am I the only one having this issue?

Thomas

eurotunes

And so do I.

It's rubbish!

Mobile Web Publishing
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WillR

But that's actually how most mobile phones display regular websites. The problem with most online phone emulators and simulators is that they incorrectly show the zoomed in version of the website. You'll find though if you visit a website on an iPhone or Blackberry what you actually see is the zoomed out version of the website and it's then up to you to zoom in and find the information you need.

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dshipman

yep, this is how the warrior forum looks on an iPhone. Zoomed out.

Virtual Force

I don't agree and I think Google Gomo is very good.

ElenaEn

Agree with everyone.. And it also creates a confusion around a "mobile-friendly site" concept. Sorry, but fitting the same desktop content into a narrower space doesn't really make a mobile-friendly experience. I ran my previous company's website through one of the mobile-optimizer platforms they listed (can't remember if it was dudamobile or another one), and the outcome was less then optimal: while large gallery images and a 2 paragraph blurb of text work great for a desktop site, I certainly do not want them imported onto the home page of the mobile site. In fact, I'd rather start from scratch and show ONLY the info the mobile visitors would want to see: a quick list of services, tap-to-call button, a quick contact form (with 3-4 fields, and not 8 like on the desktop site), directions to the office, etc.. Much easier to build that from scratch then import. And that's what all major brands are going.

DimitriSL Agree with you on the human approach, but don't really think it is a threat. What they are doing should make businesses be more aware that mobile is now BUT few small businesses have the in-house resources to build the mobile site CORRECTLY, hook it up to the social and local efforts, and/or do mobile campaigns (SMS, QR codes, etc) correctly. ("correctly" is the key here : ). In fact, most we talked to would rather hire an outside expert to manage it for them (assuming the right cost/results balance).

Scarab :
No kidding.. that animation is a bit annoying, I can't even get to the footer links in Chrome (hello?), and the Feedback form did not do anything.