Google mobile search - which one? I get three!

[anallawalla]

I can get to m.google.com in a desktop browser, which redirects to (e.g.) [google.com...]

I got only five results, which was unusual.

On my iPhone, the Google search app got me over 800,000 results.

On my iPhone/Safari, m.google.com took me to a disambiguation page and I had to fend off a few attempts to point me to the App, until I got to a browser based search. There I got 479k results.

[tedster]

There's only one thing I've read that might be relevant, and I'm not sure it's relevant to your situation. Google does maintain three different sets of "mobile" results - one each for feature phones, smartphones and tablets.

However, those are very big swings in the numbers you're seeiong. Does make you wonder what's going on.

[rustybrick]

Ted,

Where did you read they have three different sets of results?

They have a separate mobile index for feature phones, but not until recently did they create a googlebot for smartphones. As far as I know, the index for smartphones, tablets and desktop users are the same - but feature phones have their own index.

[tedster]

I'm going purely by memory, Rusty - I'll see if I can research this and come up with a source.

My memory tells me that the index itself may be the same, but the ranking algorithm is different. However, tha may be third party information rather than straight from Google.

[lucy24]

In the GWT "search queries" area there are entirely separate categories for "Mobile" and "Mobile (smartphone)". With entirely separate numbers.

fwiw

[anallawalla]

Anyone else seeing such big swings in the results?