Spotted over at Media Post, Google has announced results from a recent study into mobile search patterns. The search giant has announced that the mobile search behavior on iPhone and Android phones has changed to the point where mobile search is as successful as on-line search. But is Google looking too narrowly at smartphone searches? There is a big difference between searches performed on mobile browsers and on mobile search engines.
An overview of the study:
Google studied search queries from over 10,000 users of both iPhone and Android. The users’ remained anonymous, but the sheer size of the samples allowed Google to draw some interesting conclusions. It found that queries on these platforms have increased from an average of 2.5 words (like most mobile search) to 3 words (like most on-line search). It also found that smartphone users are more likely to run the same search again and again, suggesting that the actual process of doing the search is no longer as laborious as it used to be. These two pieces of information show that mobile search is becoming almost identical to on-line search, Google claims.
What we think?
Far be it for me to disagree with Google, but it seems that it’s confusing two very distinct terms: “search” and “mobile search”. In a direct quote, one of the Google researchers, Maryam Kamvar, states that the “study shows that properly targeted mobile ads would enormously benefit the advertiser and the mobile user. This is because we find mobile users on the non-high-end devices who query a topic seem to be ‘loyalists’ to a particular topic.”
Well… yes. That’s because mobile search is still a very difficult process, despite the best efforts of many mobile search companies. It’s a messy system to have to work in. A user who does regular mobile searches would need to be pretty dedicated, because it’s not an easy process. But the kind of searches that Google are talking about are a different beast altogether. These are searches that are performed on a mobile browser search engine, on a smartphone with a QWERTY keyboard; what we could more accurately term a “mobile browser search.” Of course mobile browser search is closer to on-line search. That’s because it’s a hybrid system that is specifically designed to be closer to on-line search.
I really don’t think this study has any new information to impart. We already knew that mobile search is hard to use. We already knew that mobile browser search is closer to on-line search. But that really doesn’t help with the overwhelming majority of people who still use feature phones, and don’t have access to easy, on-line search services.
I think you have a bad case of chasing the long tail. There may be way more non-smartphones, but their usage numbers are dwarfed by their smarter cousins. The same holds true for BBs, in the US they only account for < 10% of mobile page views? Even with a smartphone, the user needs to WANT to use it. http://gs.statcounter.com/#mobile_browser-US-daily-20080701-20090512
I am not all all suprised that people with smartphones do search with Google. And that mobile users not are afraid of using 2,5 words or more, honestly iPhone feels like browsing the web in many ways.
The only problem I see right now is the problem to actually find mobile sites, i.e. “mobile search engines”. It doesn’t seem that Google doing much work with indexing mobile sites and make a separate search functionality available.
Cian, I completely agree with you! I love this article! Bena