Meet the Mobile Search Engines
A special report from the Search Engine Strategies conference, December 4-7, 2006, Chicago, IL.
Mobile search vs. web search
"Mobile search is different from standard, PC-based Web search in three ways," said Matt Tengler, Product Manager at JumpTap, a Massachusetts-based firm that helps wireless operators deliver a mobile search experience for subscribers and advertising partners:- Content: "Currently, mobile content is dominated by mobile consumables, such as ring tones," he said.
- Form factor: "The first page becomes the first few search results," he said.
- Opportunities: "A personal device is always on," he said, "presenting more customized advertising opportunities."
However, mobile search has a number of barriers to content delivery. Usability is a concern because user interfaces need to mature. And there is a limited amount of content outside of a few key verticals.
"Given a mobile phone's limited screen real estate," said Paul Yiu, Product Manager of Mobile Search at Yahoo, "what Yahoo has done is have one box - no room for tabs. Then, we determine the most likely type of search. For example, a search for 'Starbucks' is most likely a local search."
Limited screen real estate also does not encourage longer query strings. Currently, the average number of keywords per query is 2.3 on standard Web searches. Tengler presented some data from his organization:
| Percentage of searches | Number of query words |
| 50.0% | 1 |
| 33.9% | 2 |
| 10.5% | 3 |
| 3.7% | 4 |
"Fifty percent of mobile searches represent the top seven categories," said Tengler.
| Categories | Percentage of mobile searches |
| NavigationCategorie | 16% |
| Music/ring tones | 10% |
| Entertainment | 8% |
| Sports | 6% |
| Reference | 5% |
| Local | 4% |
| Shopping | 2% |
Despite mobile search limitations, the mobile search engine reps have seen a steady growth in unique users, searches per user, and average transaction amount. For example, at the Japanese Web site Rakuten.com, the average transaction on both the personal computer (PC) and on a mobile phone is $80. "We are seeing the same trends in Europe and the USA," said Agarwal.
How to optimize for mobile search engine
Yiu presented the following tips and guidelines on optimizing content for mobile search engines:- Write short, concise titles.
- Adhere to mobile standards (validator.w3c.org)
- Connect, or link to, legitimate and popular Web sites.
- Make sure you are not disallowing mobile crawlers from spidering your site.
- Submit your mobile site for inclusion here
Agarwal presented his tips on optimizing content for mobile search:
- Design for low-end phones
- Keep the URL structure as simple as possible
- Specify the doc type in the XML preamble
- Specify the character encoding
- Keep links descriptive
Shari Thurow is the Marketing Director at Grantastic Designs, Inc. and the author of the book Search Engine Visibility.
Search Headlines
NOTE: Article links often change. In case of a bad link, use the publication's search facility, which most have, and search for the headline.Year in review: Going mobile, in a big way, News.com
Judge: Can't link to Webcast if copyright owner objects, News.com
Stanford's HighWire Press Passes 1.5 Million Free Full Text Articles, Searchblog
Page view metrics? Bah, humbug!, Matt Cutts Blog
Search Engine Special Logos for Christmas 2006 From Ask.com, Dogpile, Google, and Yahoo, Resource Shelf
Judge Dismisses Google AdSense & AutoLink Toolbar Lawsuits, Search Engine Land
Founder of Wikipedia plans search engine to rival Google, Times Online
Somebody Needs To Stop This, Tech Crunch
Google To Stay Single In China, Web Pro News
Power Your Search Apps with Yahoo! Search APIs, Yahoo Search Blog
Google multi-billion dollar bets in 2007/a>, ZD Net
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Biography
Shari Thurow is marketing director at Grantastic Designs, a full-service search engine marketing, Web and graphic design firm. Acknowledged as the leading expert on search engine friendly Web sites worldwide, she is the author of the top-selling marketing book, Search Engine Visibility, published through New Riders. Shari's areas of expertise include site design, search engine optimization and usability.
Article Archives by Shari Thurow
Behind the Scenes in the Search Engine Labs - Sep 27, 2006
Do Patents Point to SEO Gold? - Sep 21, 2006
Multichannel Metrics: Managing the Sea of Data - May 3, 2006
News Search Engine Optimization - Feb 21, 2006
More article archives
