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

Maybe your thinking…. What did you do the site? Are the ads even appearing like their supposed to? Has your traffic dropped and its affecting CTR? Trust me I looked at all that but the answer is actually very simple, but before I state my reasoning lets see if you can determine why by hearing what this particular sites focus is.

My site is focused around 1 thing and 1 thing only, that being The Ohio State Buckeyes. Its a site dedicated to Ohio State Buckeyes sports news, so the advertising has always been very targeted via adsense or affiliate programs that tie back into Ohio State sports.

If you pay much attention to sports, and you are involved with online marketing then the answer is probably clear. Nearly 1 week ago, a very praised Ohio State team went to Los Angles California to take on the USC Trojans, long story short we got beat and beat bad. The result of this has been a lot of angry fans, fans who are calling for peoples heads whether it be coaches or players. The point I’m trying to make is that factors outside the control of a site owner can heavily impact earnings on small sites like mine when its a very niche category. I read an article yesterday talking about how tickets are going for half of what they’ve been selling for. Because of fans being upset look at how many things are affected.

Peoples attitudes and feelings play a big part in their online habits and buying processes. Because so many fans have a negative attitude towards our program at this particular time, it is reflected in their actions while surfing online. I hope that as time goes on, the bitter taste of last weeks loss will leave fans including myself, but in the meantime I expect lowered results on the current advertising running on my site because of this.

What can a site owner do? There are many advertising alternatives to adsense. If your site receives a large number of page views there’s always CPM based advertising where your still able to make money whether your ads are clicked or not. You can also run other advertising that’s based on a broader category than in just my case a particular team.

For some fair weather fans or people who are out to make a quick buck, they might just create a site around a team that’s hot at that time. Have I thought about doing this in my particular case? Heck No!!!! Go Bucks!!!!

* Quality Score will now be more accurate because it will be calculated at the time of each search query
* Keywords will no longer be marked ‘inactive for search’
* ‘First page bid’ will replace ‘minimum bid’ in your account

http://adwords.blogspot.com/2008/08/quality-score-improvements.html

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You can basically take any sentence from this article and make valid points as to why its completely wrong but I’ll just pick out a few that really stuck out to me.

Quote #1 “I’ve been doing SEM for more than 10 years, and I’ve never, not once, seen a search campaign created by an in-house team outperform one crafted by a competent SEM agency.”

Well from this IN-HOUSE SEM’s experience over the years, every campaign I’ve taken from a search agency and that includes very competent agencies whom I have the utmost respect for, have performed better within the first month in terms of ROI by typically 20 - 30% ROI. One of the first things they teach you when your a kiddie in school is to be very careful when using words like “never” and “not once” because you put yourself at risk of sounding foolish. Yeah… lets continue.

Quote #2 “I continue to be amazed by the number of CEOs and CMOs who have told me - with a straight face — that “Google is doing a great job running my campaign.”"

I’ll agree that Google is in it for the money but this has absolutely nothing to do with an in-house SEM team and everything to do with a corporate executive who is making marketing decisions that they shouldn’t be involved with. One corporate executive who knows there’s value in search but hasn’t explored creating in-house team or an agency is a whole other argument.

Quote #3 “Today, senior managers not only lack the objective criteria required to distinguish competent from incompetent search managers; most don’t even know the right questions to ask job candidates.”

All I can say is the last 2 SEM managers that I’ve had are not only very qualified but have asked top notch questions in interviews using questions that you actually have to use your brain to answer as opposed to reading a misguided blog post about SEM.

Quote #4 “As I’ve said before, the only thing that an in-house search team should ever be doing is SEO, because it’s a relatively trivial task that is hardly “rocket science.” Anything beyond this requires a specialist firm to take your search objectives forward.”

There’s so many things you could say about this and I know that the ’seo and rocket science’ comment has been stated before. The bottom line is that more companies are moving their SEM efforts in-house and this is scary to some.

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To sum things up:

For companies looking to move in-house it takes a lot of work but from personal experience the hard work is certainly worth the rewards. Having the flexibility to manage your own accounts and to make immediate changes is so valuable. For me spending time marketing a handful of sites and dedicating energy to researching their audience gives me the advantage over an agency who deals with a large number of sites where they don’t have the ability to give each site the individual time it deserves. With that being said, I’d be curious to hear other opinions and certainly there’s some good points to be made for both sides.

HGTV: http://video.aol.com/video-category/hgtv/113525
Food Network: http://video.aol.com/video-category/food-network/113524
DIY Network: http://video.aol.com/video-category/diy/113522
Fine Living Network: http://video.aol.com/video-category/fine-living/113523

This time around I won’t be covering as many sessions but the ones I am writing about personally seem pretty interesting. Here’s the sessions I’ll be covering.

June 3rd
10:45-12:00 pm - Winning from the Start: Getting Ad Copy Right

1:30-2:45 pm - Conversion Optimization: Winning After They Arrive

June 4th
10:45-12:00 pm - What You Should Be Measuring — But Aren’t!

I’ll also be updating my status on twitter which I’ve had problems keeping up with in the past so shoot me a note if you’d like to meet up. My badge obviously has my name (Justin Davy) and the company I work for is Scripps Networks. See you all there.