Free mobile site from Google
Google has announced that it is going to make a massive effort to help bring more sites to the mobile web, and that for a year, it is willing to pay the bill in order to accomplish that goal.
The search engine giant is working with Duda Mobile, a mobile web optimization startup, to offer 12 months of free mobile site hosting and mobile website optimizing to help to fill in and boost the results available from mobile browsers and to make the internet friendlier to smartphones and tablets.
Though this announcement was first made last Thursday, it has since expanded to provide a great deal more detail as to what this broadening of the Go Mo program will entail.
The Duda Mobile blog had included a post that has since been deleted from its website, which stated that “Our hope is that by offering both the education AND the service at no cost for one year, we can help businesses make the shift to mobile more quickly, benefiting both their business as well as us consumers who no longer want to pinch and zoom our way through their regular websites on our phones.”
Though the service itself isn’t all that pricey – typically coming with a monthly price tag of $9, this will still save its users $108 per year, which can help take down the entry barrier that can be prohibitive for many smaller sites that have amazing content but that don’t generate any online revenue.
Duda has managed to keep its costs down by using templates that will automatically add PC browser-optimized content into the format that is meant for the much smaller mobile browser and screen size. The company has also offered free tools for customization, as well as no-fee phone and email support.
There are a large number of reasons that Google is motivated to add more sites to the mobile web. The larger the amount of smartphone-friendly content there is available on the internet, the more Google will be able to provide relevant results for mobile searches, allowing it to increase the revenue from its mobile ads.
