For many years Google has had a seemingly unbreakable hold on internet search, with competitors like as Bing and Yahoo having a hard time making any gains in the marketplace.

However, search on mobile devices is developing into quite a unique proposition, with differences in content, user expectations, and technologies.

Venture Capitalists are now betting that Google might well be vulnerable in this new area of search. And so they are pouring hundreds of millions of dollars of investment into start ups that are targeting mobile search. more»

Most people know that Google uses a complex system to determine which results to show from a search query. What some people may not know is that this algorithm gets updated periodically.

In mid-April, Google implemented a major change, one that was focused on the mobile-readiness of websites.

While this may seem to be a small technicality, in fact it can have huge impact on anyone that depends on customers finding them through Google. more»

Mobile search marketing enjoyed a very good Christmas season this year. The numbers are impressive.

According to the Digital Marketing Report Q4 2014 , mobile organic search traffic grew 54% from a year earlier, and now represents over 40% of all organic search across the three main search engines (Google, Bing, Yahoo).

And more impressive, on Christmas day mobile plus tablet click share was over 50%!
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The number of people who are regularly searching on smartphones is rocketing, in-line with the explosive growth of mobile devices around the world.

Currently, around one quarter of all searches now come from mobile devices.

This infographic takes a look at the statistics around mobile search, and shows when, where and how users are performing their searches.
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Mobile advertising is definitely on a growth spurt these days.

According to Publicis-owned ad agency ZenithOptimedia, global advertising will grow at a respectable rate of 3.5% over the coming year, with internet advertising growing about three times this fast. Mobile advertising on the other hand, is expected to grow at an astounding 77% this year! more»

UK consumers who use their phones for search tend to take a longer time for research compared to US-based consumers, but their purchase intent is very high, with over half reporting they had eventually made the purchase.

This and many other interesting facets of UK mobile shopping behavior are highlighted in “Path-to-Purchase” infographic.
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American superstore-chain Home Depot is focusing much of its efforts on increasing mobile spending, its chief marketing officer Trish Mueller announced at the recent mobile marketing conference.

The company, which has been a long-term and early-adopter of mobile technology within its marketing currently targets customers via a six-pronged mobile approach: web, apps, search, social media, email, and advertising.
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Google has released some interesting data indicating that 44% of Christmas gift searches will be done via mobile this year compared to 20% last year and less than 2% in 2008. more»

Mobile marketing and advertising have generally become mainstream by now, and along with this has come an increasing appreciation for the importance of mobile search.

Now publications traditionally focused only on PC based SEM are actively discussing and analyzing mobile search. Recently in MediaPost’s SearchInsider publication, Aaron Goldman wrote an article listing 15 interesting and potentially significant statistics about mobile and search. more»

Mobile offers marketers many unique advertising possibilities. Among them are the ability for location-based ads, personalized ads, and ads based on time of day.

But what type of mobile ads do consumers really want to see? An in-depth study from Upstream confirms that personalized ads are by far and away the consumer favorite.
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UK search specialist Latitude Digital marketing has released an in-depth report on the Mobile PPC* market which shows some striking trends.

The report presents an interesting story – the overall growth of mobile search is strong, and the customers are clicking on the ads. However, the overall conversion rate is still relatively low as very few companies have taken the next step of making a website optimized for mobile.

(*Pay Per Click, e.g. paid mobile search) more»

Over the past several years, search advertising has become a mainstream component of many companies’ advertising plans. But search advertising is evolving, with new capabilities such as local search and mobile search coming on strong.

A recent survey conducted by Econsultancy in partnership with agency Guava provides some details on this important communication channel. more»

Google is clearly the dominant player in online search, and although they already have a strong position in mobile search, it remains unclear if they will be able to replicate their level of domination in the long term in the mobile market.

A recent report published by Pyramid Research examines how differences in consumers’ usage of mobile devices as well as emerging new technologies may well open the door for new competitors to develop a strong presence in the mobile search market. more»

It is widely known that consumers use their mobile device in a different way to their PC’s, and according to Steve Jobs they don’t use search but go to apps. However, recent data published by Mobile Commerce has given us an interesting insight into what consumers search for on their mobile device.

They have published a list of the top 100 most searched terms of 2010 on their mobile search platform. Mobile Commerce handles around 40 million searches a month, so this gives us an interesting insight into what users are looking for on the mobile handset. more»

For several years now search giant Google has been saying that mobile is one of their most important areas for growth.

In their most recent quarterly financial report, Google announced that they expect their mobile business to reach $1 billion in revenue this year. more»

An interesting two part article was recently published in Search Engine Land explaining how to maximise ROI in mobile paid search.

The article, written by Mona Elesseily, VP of Online Marketing Strategy at Page Zero Media, outlines differences between traditional paid search and mobile paid search and explains how they lead to a difference in value of keywords, the difference in targeting options, and an increased importance of being in the first couple of results. more»

For a company whose roots are firmly in the fixed internet, Google has been consistently aggressive at supporting mobile based services.

In particular, they have spent a lot of energy working to make mobile search as relevant as possible to a consumer’s mobile needs.

In line with this, Google just has released some very interesting location-based extensions to mobile AdWords. more»

A recent study published by the IAB-UK and PricewaterhouseCoopers has showed that during 2009, total spend in the UK mobile advertising market grew by 32% to a new high of £37.6 million.

Among the specific formats of mobile advertising, mobile search increased the fastest with a 41% growth.
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What are people searching for, and how are they searching?

As more and more people spend time on the mobile web, the volume of mobile search queries is also rapidly increasing. Mobile Commerce has been providing the search functionality to a number of the mobile operators in the UK, and has recently released a report which provides a detailed look at how people search over mobile.
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We all know that the internet experience is different on a mobile than on a desktop PC. But whereas most people focus solely on the size of the screen, in fact the differences are much more profound.

In this white paper, Pierre Scokaert, CEO and founder of mobile entertainment search company abphone explores how the mobile is in fact a snacking device, where content must be delivered and consumed in minutes or seconds, and the important implications this has for brands, content creators, and mobile search engines. more»

One of China’s leading mobile advertising companies, Madhouse, has partnered with China Telecom to bring advertising to mobile search.

Best Tone Information Service is a wholly-owned China Telecom subsidiary that provides local search services. Madhouse will empower Best Tone’s mobile advertising business and serve as Best Tone’s preferred mobile advertising platform partner more»

San Francisco based Twitter, the third largest social network globally, has recently made improvements to its search functionality in a move that many believe will lead to Twitter search ads and a new revenue stream for Twitter.

The new search function would let consumers and companies scan the feeds of Twitter’s 6 million members in order to get up-to-the-minute information about key topics and trends. more»

Abphone, the France based mobile entertainment search company, seems to be doing very well according to announcements made by the company recently.

Abphone has an interesting business, it has built a search engine and service focused solely on entertainment content – images, wallpapers, videos and games. more»

Following several months of speculation, Verizon recently announced that Microsoft will be providing portal, local, and internet search and mobile advertising capabilities on the Verizon network. The five year agreement is set to start in mid-2009. more»

Even in this tough economic climate, some companies are able to move ahead with their financing plans. Taptu, a pure-play mobile search engine has secured a Series B round of £6.45 million, and has added a senior executive to its management team. more»

Turkey’s third largest operator, Avea, has announced the launch of content search services powered by Mobile Content Network’s (MCN’s) ‘federated search’ technology. Avea will also launch MCN’s allwords pay-per-click (PPC) advertising solution. more»

The Mobile Marketing Association (MMA) has released a new white paper on Mobile Search. The paper gives an overview of search, how it differs from web-based search, and the opportunities it provides for marketers and mobile operators. (download) more»

At the CTIA show in San Francisco, Medio, one of the leaders in mobile search, announced a partnership with AdMob, the world’s largest mobile advertising marketplace. Under this agreement, AdMob will deliver targeted mobile search ads to consumers using Medio’s analytics-driven mobile search service. more»

ChaCha, the innovative mobile answers service from the US, has launched ChaCha 1:1, a mobile marketing service, with Coca-Cola as one of their launch brand partners. more»

Search advertising is a major part of the online advertising world, and it looks like search is rapidly becoming a major part of the mobile advertising industry as well. Studies predict that search advertising might represent around 20% of the overall mobile advertising market by 2012 (source: eMarketer – March 2008).

This week we have three articles focusing on the search aspects of mobile advertising:

With much of the mobile content action moving off-portal, the pressure is on publishers, now in command of their mobile content destinies, to take charge and proactively promote their mobile content and sites through paid mobile search, or top-notch placement in organic search results – or both. Must publishers choose between Google and Yahoo, or are there other alternatives?

By Peggy Anne Salz, founder, MSearchGroove.
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One company that we’ve always liked to follow is Mobile Content Networks (MCN), who have a completely different approach to search from all the others.

In this interview, we speak with Marc Bookman, CEO of MCN, about their “Federated” approach to search, innovations in search advertising, and the differences he sees in markets around the world. more»

If you’re interested in mobile search advertising but don’t know exactly where to begin, here is a series of articles that will take you step-by-step through everything you need to know. more»

US Cellular and JumpTap have announced a partnership that will see US Cellular use JumpTap’s white-label search and advertising solutions. The agreement will allow US Cellular customers to search for on and off deck content while JumpTap will have access to US Cellular’s data and usage information in order to deliver the most targeted ads possible. more»

A new study released recently by Juniper Research has predicted that revenues generated by mobile search advertising will reach $4.8 billion by 2013. more»

JumpTap announced that it has signed a deal to provide its search and advertising solution across all seven of TeliaSonera’s networks (Sweden, Spain, Denmark, Finland, Norway, Estonia and Lithuania). more»

According to eMarketer’s latest report (“Mobile Search: Clash of the Titans”) mobile search in the US will account for about $715 million by 2011. This would represent 15% of the total mobile advertising market, which is estimated to be worth $4.7 billion by that time. more»

Yahoo! continues to make inroads into the mobile world with two recent announcements concerning its Yahoo! Go for Mobile service. The Yahoo! Go for Mobile service brings a suite of features more»

BusinessWeek has a very interesting article about the future of mobile search, and which companies are likely to become the dominant players in what is expected to be an advertising market worth over $11 billion by 2011 (BusinessWeek forecast). more»