According to comScore, almost 10% of the US is now conducting mobile searches during June 2008. This is a 30% increase over 2007. According to Nielsen, just over 15% of searchers in the US have conducted mobile searches. Google dominates with a 61% market share while Yahoo has an 18% and Microsoft a 5% mobile market share.

There are various differences between searches done via a computer and those done through mobile. According to the top 100 mobile keywords from AT&T’s keyword tool (now removed because of partnership with Yahoo) over 73% of searches were navigational based while 15% were transactional and 12% informational.

Top 10 Mobile Keywords (Sept. 2007):
1. Google
2. Yahoo
3. Sports
4. Facebook
5. Myspace
6. Weather
7. Myspace.com
8. Yahoo.com
9. Gmail
10. www.myspace.com

As you can see searches being done via mobile are primarly branded terms and only 1 to 2 keywords. Over the past year, 3G technology has grown rapidly and based on data we’ve seen through Google Webmaster Tools, more long tail searches are starting to creep up from mobile users. Overall though, searches are still shorter than what we’ve seen from web search.

When comparing web search volume to mobile search volume, much insight is gained in the differences between searching habits. Of the queries with more than 30% of the MSN monthly search volume, nearly 70% are related to mobile content. This data was over 1 year ago and as mentioned before, mobile has grown this year over 30%.

One major difference between web and mobile ads is the amount of characters that a paid search ad on mobile is capable of displaying. With a typical search campaign, you have 25 characters for title, 70 characters for the ad text, and 35 characters for the display url. With mobile, each ad contains a headline and a description with a maximum of 18 characters each. With such limitations in characters, you need to get to the point quick.

As seen from the top keywords above, a searcher on a mobile device is much less likely to enter a long search query because of of convenience. Based on conversations we have had with Google, its suggested that there be no more than 50 keywords per Adgroup.

Mobile is still in its infancy, but its growing very quickly and there’s not a lot of inventory out there for paid ads. It’s a great time to test the waters and there is a lot to learn, so give it a shot today.

Within the next few days I hope to have some early lessons learned and insights (without giving away to much )since there really isn’t a whole lot of information out there.

References:
http://www.brysonmeunier.com/characteristics-of-the-top-100-mobile-search-queries-at-at-t
http://cellphones.org/interviews/aaron-wall-from-seobook-on-mobile-search
http://searchengineland.com/comscore-almost-10-percent-in-us-uk-now-doing-mobile-search-14741.php