Today’s post about mobile and search is from Mark Thompson from Businesswebhostingplans.com.

runningwithsuits Doing searches on the go literally Although the internet and web applications have advanced at breakneck speed, one of the areas that seems stuck in the 90’s and early 00’s are search engines. Although many search engines have done a good job of getting us the information we want quickly and efficiently, not much has changed in terms of the big picture. We are still finding ourselves typing in a few keywords to a box and hoping to get the right web page within the first 3 or 4 results. With the advent of mobile search this dynamic is slowly changing with search engines designed for mobile users on the go.

If you’re in the cohort of people surfing the web more and more on your mobile device the experience you have using a search engine probably isn’t the best from your tiny screen. Search queries originating from mobile devices are still a small proportion of overall searches but they are the fastest growing group overall. Currently, around 15% of Google searches come from a mobile phone and the rate is at 20% for Yahoo. Bing and Windows Mobile have been in the search game for less time so they have actually been able to focus more of their growth strategy on mobile search. The strategy behind the new Windows Mobile smartphones is to integrate Bing across many applications and leapfrog the competition.

One way that mobile search is taking advantage of powerful new smartphones is though voice search. On almost all smartphones you can now simply speak your search query and the result list will load when your voice is converted to text.

Perhaps the most interesting thing about the growth in mobile search is that around a fifth of all mobile searchers are looking to make a purchase of some type. These may be people who are in a physical store or who are doing shopping research online before heading out. Yet another group of people (who must be a large percentage of the total) want to make a purchase with their phone – and quickly.

The fact that most retailers still have not optimized their websites for the mobile shopper is resulting in lost sales every day. A key for website owners to provide a good experience for mobile visitors is to invest in a windows hosting plan . Search engines are quick to this fact and have developed slick mobile interfaces to do the shopping for you. For example, the Deals app from Bing produced by Windows Mobile makes it easy to search for both physical goods like books and DVDs as well as getting a good deal on a restaurant via direct access to Groupon deals.

If you are a website owner, don’t be relegated to the desktop website visitor only. Be sure your site is optimized for mobile search and you’ll see instant growth in visits and interactivity.


This guest post was brought to you by Mark Thompson from Businesswebhostingplans.com, an independent portal reviewing the best web hosting companies