The firm behind the .mobi Internet domain name for mobile sites is now accepting proposals for find.mobi, a consumer-facing mobile search tool.

DotMobi's research and development team created the find.mobi product to showcase an operational mobile search engine for the mobile Web.

"Although we have not, until now, formally announced its availability, find.mobi is already receiving significant traffic," said James Pearce, dotMobi vice president of technology, in a statement.

"And it has been implemented as a private-labeled mobile search engine for one European operator with additional customers in the pipeline, so we feel confident we've created a useful, valuable tool," he said.

Based in Dublin, Ireland, dotMobi is a consortium backed by wireless-focused Ericsson, the GSM Association, Hutchison 3, Microsoft, Nokia, Samsung Electronics, T-Mobile, Telefonica Moviles, TIM, Visa, Vodafone, Syniverse and Orascom Telecom.

In contrast to other search engines, sites captured and ranked by find.mobi are designed primarily to work on mobile devices. This ensures that consumers don't pull up search results that won't display on mobile phones.

DotMobi said the find.mobi index includes mobile-friendly sites from all key domains, including .mobi.

The company is asking for proposals for the disposal of all or parts of the find.mobi assets, including the mobile Web site at find.mobi, find.mobi name and address, and the algorithms and codes for the Web crawler, mobile site detection, parking and landing page detection and adult content classifier learning.

Companies interested in pitching for find.mobi are asked to contact Paul Nerger, vice president of advanced services and applications at dotMobi at .

Once Mr. Nerger gets the intention to submit a proposal, dotMobi will send a notice of receipt and a bi-directional non-disclosure agreement that must be completed before taking any further steps.

The request for proposal process is open only to legally registered firms at the time of the signing of the non-disclosure agreement, dotMobi said.

"Find.mobi was originally created by dotMobi to illustrate and communicate to mobile search vendors how we thought that search should be done to make the mobile Web more compelling," said Mr. Nerger in a statement.

"When we looked at early mobile search sites, we were disappointed," he said. "We simply did not think that it made sense to return non-mobile content as part of a mobile query.

"Find.mobi was built to serve as an example to the search industry to change the way that it should think about search when applied to mobile. But find.mobi has outgrown the lab and now it's time for find.mobi to get a better home where it can continue to grow."