Mobile Search Company Nubiq launches MobiSeer
Rating: the 2.0 of mobile search but why only for dotmobi?
Nubiq is a small but innovative mobile search company based in Ireland. It has already launched a mobile community application Zinadoo which we wrote about here.
Nubiq has tied up with dotMobi and is masterminding its plans in the mobile search and community space by offering social, search and tagging services to promote dotmobi sites and services.
Zinadoo is a great application and we have just tested the new MobiSeer portal via the PC. It seems simple and easy enough and it could be a discovery tool for dotmobi sites.
OK. I put in GoMo News (not a dotmobi site) and gave it a rating of a 5 (the best). The only clue that MobiSeer spotted the mistake was a question mark in the mobile phone icon next to the search result. But it is still early days. The potential of this service is that it can drive uptake for dotmobi and become a real tool for discovering sites made for mobile.
But all sites mobile ready or not should be able to be added to the MobiSeer mobile search service. Nubiq needs to come up with a strategy of finding identifying the sites and next to name or result colour coding the result by ease of use. The question mark phone icon is not enough.
This will give consumers choice. Consumers can decide whether or not they prefer to view mobile ready sites or not. This is vital as the point of mobile search is not finding a dotmobi site; but it is for finding information and relevant key results.
From the press release:
Helene Haughney, CEO, Nubiq Ltd; “Users of our mobile site creator tool Zinadoo® complained of click heavy search tools that took too long to load and didn’t offer a good end user experience. So, in response, we developed MobiSeer – fast, easy to use, with a friendly user interface.”
Users can now:• Avail of advanced mobile site design and editing tools
• Gain inspiration from a mobile site design gallery
• link externally and have their link validated by the dotMobi Ready.mobi tool,
• connect easily from the mobile site via the new click-to-connect services.
• Take advantage of the new tips and guidelines offered by the service.
• Tag their site for mobile search so users can avail of Nubiq’s new Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) tools.
Hi - I’m working on the development of MobiSeer. Thank you for the post Bena, it’s great to reach alpha, we’re working hard to have beta out there soon. I have a few comments on your post:
1. Mobiseer allows the user to enter any url into the bookmarks (this url can be .mobi, .com or whatever you like). This is because not all mobile sites have .mobi domains and users should be allowed the freedom to enter what are good mobile sites for them.
2. The ? question mark phone icon image that appears means that a mobiReady test has not been performed on the url entered. At present this testing procedure is not on-demand but offline within MobiSeer, future releases will implement a more speedy on-demand testing of URLs entered. The ? logo will then change to indicate the mobi readiness of the url the user has entered (displayed as signal bars within the phone icon).
3. Future functionality will include the mobiReady rating which will start to play a far more important role in the searches performed by users.
Ranking will be influenced much more by the mobile readiness of a site than it is currently - search results will also be more tailored to the capabilities of the users mobile device when the user is accessing the site from a handset.
4. Finally, “rating” as it stands at the moment is provided on an individual user basis. For example, a user can rate a site as a 5 and that is the current final rating. Additional search functionality which is currently in the pipeline will use a community rating scheme.
Glad you liked Alpha, roll on Beta!
cheers, Patsy.