As mobile phones are becoming increasingly popular for accessing the Internet, webmasters are finding it almost mandatory to make sure their mobile site has been indexed by search engines like Google. In fact, most of the mobile sites are designed keeping in mind users’ interests, they hardly ever think of being search engine friendly, thus, losing out on the mobile search audience.

If your website doesn’t show in Google mobile search results or even when you use the “site:” operator then it could mean either or both of two things:

1. Googlebot is unable to find your site – Googlebot is Google’s crawler that should first crawl your site before it can be indexed by Google. It takes some time to crawl a newly created site. So, first create a Mobile Sitemap and submit it using Google Webmaster tools, just like a regular Sitemap.
2. Google is unable to access your website – Some mobile sites become unsearchable by search engines like Google as they only allow access to mobile phones, not search engines. Webmasters who want their mobile site to be accessed by Google should allow all User-agents including “Googlebot-Mobile” to access their site. The User-agent string should contain the “Googlebot-Mobile” string (this may, however, change later on). DNS lookups can also be used to verify Googlebot.

How to ensure Google recognises you mobile URLs

After the Googlebot-Mobile has crawled your mobile site’s URL, Google checks whether it is viewable on a mobile device or not. Google will not include it in its mobile site index if can’t be viewed on a mobile phone. However, the site will be included in its web index.

Another factor that determines whether your mobile site will be indexed in Google’s mobile index is the “DTD (Doc Type Definition)” declaration of your mobile friendly URL. Compact HTML and XHTML Mobile are the appropriate mobile formats for this declaration.

An interview by Australian Sky News reporter, David Speers, has shed even more light on Rupert Murdoch’s plans to move away from free content to a pay-for-content model. He now intends to possibly stick it to Google by preventing them from indexing Newscorp content.

To date the pay for content strategy has been met with mixed reviews. Mark Scott of the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) was one of the first heavyweights in Australia to hit out at his plans.

Now we have further revelations from Mr Murdoch suggesting they may block Google completely.

As an example, the Wall Street Journal currently appears in Google SERPs and Google News, however when you click on a WSJ link you are taken to the page which offers a short snippet or summary of the article. If you want to continue reading you must be a paying subscriber.

If Rupert Murdoch continues with his current plans and Newscorp does block Google, by raising the “barrier to the ceiling”, stories from the WSJ or any other Newscorp publication will be blocked. . . depending on what your thoughts are of their journalism you may see it as a good thing.

So how will this play out? For two opposing view points head over to the Blog Maverick who believe Rupert Murdoch is right. On the other hand you have Andrew Shortland suggesting Rupert Murdoch will be the equivalent of “Howard Stern Without The Lesbians”.

My take, it is a very calculated move by Rupert Murdoch. . . and if it works we will see a flood of media powerhouses and businesses moving towards paid content and pay-per-use strategies. If it doesn’t he always has TV?

One final thought. It does seem Newscorp has been beaten at its own game, for the time being?

Seth Godin recently suggested how media companies, such as newspapers, built audiences and then businesses and brands rented their audiences.

In today’s online world the playing field has shifted. Google has built the platform and they are renting their audience back to the newspapers. Newscorp no longer owns the platform, they’re renting eyeballs as Seth would say. Now it seems a time has come as Mr Murdoch wants to stop renting and move back to a position of owning the platform — and build a loyal customer base in the process.

Only time will tell if Rupert Murdoch’s strategy is correct.