Brett_Tabke - 1:24 pm on Oct 7, 2007 (gmt 0)

How did they determine what was a mobile page view and what was a desktop based browser view? According to the report - they looked at agent strings.

As it stands today (just checked) they are not properly detecting several browsers and a mobile browser variations on google.com. This was one of the main topics I talked about down at the mobile conference in Orlando last week. The fact that Google misidentifies Opera, Netfront, BlackBerry/RIM, and Thunderhawk. Google thinks they are desktop browsers and refuses to display mobile search boxes. The only two that I know of that they get right are Plam and PocketIE. So the data that the study is based on is all skewed towards generic off-the-shelf mobile phones. They ignore a major portion of their own users. The tech sector of power users that use phones 10x as much as the general public. Those early adopters are far more prolific users than the general public. The top three alternatives to Pocket IE have sold more than a million copies - so someone is using them in large quantities.

The percentage of requests from PDAs in the search logs used to account for about 25 percent of the number of requests from cell phones (for the carrier studied). Today, the number of queries from the same carrier originating from PDA devices is about the same as the number of queries from cell phones.

They claim to be able to determine what is a cell phone and what is a smart phone!? I would like to know how they can even remotely make that claim.