Google Search for iPhone
Written on November 08, 2007 by Brandon Eley and 14 people have commented
One annoyance I have with my iPhone is the Google Search feature. I think the Google search results are by far the best results as far as relevancy goes. Unfortunately, however, when I set my iPhone to default to Google’s search engine, I am taken to the normal results pages. The Yahoo search option defaults to iPhone optimized search results.
Google has a mobile-optimized (and iPhone optimized) search page at www.google.com/m, so why should iPhone take me to the normal (and extremely scaled) search results?
Hopefully Google or Apple will make this an option soon. For right now, instead of using the built-in search I’m actually going to a bookmarked www.google.com/m and searching from there.
Jeremy P on November 8th, 2007 at 11:16 am
My default Google search shows mobile optimized results.
Scott E Winklebleck on November 8th, 2007 at 11:21 am
You can, when you go to http://www.google.com/m scroll to the bottom and click “View Google in: Mobile” from there on when you use the built in Safari Search it automatically goes to the Mobile Version. I love this feature.
Paul Nowak on November 8th, 2007 at 11:31 am
I did spend some time trying to turn it back to no-mobile Google after doing what Scott wrote.
You can’t switch to normal view from result page. You have to navigate to google.com/m and tap “Classic” at the bottom (not visible when browsing reults).
Why would you do that, you may ask? One day I had to search for some pictures (nud… ekhm… some car I mean) and you can’t do that with mobile Google.
Take care.
Brandon Eley on November 8th, 2007 at 3:08 pm
@Jeremy and Scott
I must have screwed up my settings then… when I go to http://www.google.com/m and scroll to the bottom, Mobile is selected. However, when I use the Safari search, Google results show in the standard format.
@Paul
You can get to the image search in mobile ;)
Okay, I think I’ve figured it out — I had to switch back to classic and then back to mobile again to get it to start searching with mobile results. I don’t know how I got that messed up… thanks for the tips.
Scott K on November 8th, 2007 at 9:26 pm
I have to politely disagree with your assessment that Google has the most relevant search results. That was true at one time and built Google their loyal following, but nowadays Yahoo! challenges them neck and neck.
While Google might still have a slight advantage in regular web searches, Yahoo’s mobile One Search brings far more relevant results for mobile phone searches.
Jared A. Scheel on January 16th, 2008 at 3:05 pm
Hmm, this problem has really been bothering me for a while. I tried the whole “mobile->classic->mobile” switch, but it didn’t work. Anyone else have any ideas?
Brandon Eley on January 16th, 2008 at 3:19 pm
Mine still does this… drives me nuts. I’d really like to figure it out. I’ve tried while being logged in and when logged out. No luck.
Dennis on January 24th, 2008 at 11:05 am
Having same issue. Switching from mobile to classic to mobile doesn’t help. This seems to have started after update 1.1.3 was installed, at least for me. Anyone find a real fix yet?
ag on June 27th, 2008 at 12:12 pm
This is a very old thread, but it’s the only one I’m finding that discuss the same problem I’m having. I cannot get the search bar to send me to the mobile version of Google. Tried the suggestion above, but it was no go…
Would love to figure this out, although I’m probably getting 3G iPhone pretty soon :P
Guillaume Jactat on March 31st, 2009 at 4:21 pm
This is weird… This thread started in november 2007… Today (april 2009), the situation is still the same. Firmware updates didn’t fix this silly that launches the wrong url while searching Google. Do easy to fix, so long… So weird.
Guillaume Jactat on August 15th, 2009 at 3:36 pm
Funny to read this thread months later ;-)
Google finally fixed the issue by redirecting iPhone and iPod to the mobile version of Google services (search engine, mail, feed reader, calendar, etc…).
Thanks Google !