“As user engagement migrates to mobile devices, the fate of browser-based search is in question, along with that of search market share leader Google,” notes iReachContent.

Now a new Insight Paper by BIA/Kelsey — “Mobile Local Discovery: The Next Era of Search — explores Google’s multipronged strategy for remaining competitive in the mobile era.

For Google, it has meant developing innovative new products like “Google Now” to designing ways to link content between apps. Most of all, Google wants to improve the search experience on mobile. The search giant would like to bring the same level of interconnectedness to mobile that the company established years ago on the desktop.

“Google is working hard to help define the user experience on mobile devices in the next decade, according to the report,” according to the IAB. “The search giant’s focus on mobile is intended both to defend its $50 billion search business and to increase its share of the $2 trillion in offline commerce that is influenced by mobile.”

In the report are thoughts on Google’s effort to improve the quality of the mobile web by penalizing web pages that are not optimized for mobile. In addition, it looks at the potential impacts of the symbolic “four horsemen” of technology that dominate the main competitive areas defining the industry: Apple (hardware), Amazon (e-commerce), Facebook (social), and Google (search).

“The existence of trillions of web pages compelled the creation of Google’s advanced index and its friendly entry point that made all that information and knowledge accessible,” said report author Michael Boland, chief analyst and VP, Content, BIA/Kelsey.

The danger for Google?

“The app-heavy mobile environment — already siloed into neat little packages — doesn’t beg for a search engine,” added Boland. “This is worrisome for Google, whose biggest and most under-recognized challenge will be migrating its dominance into a digital world that has alternate entry points.”

More information about the report, including how to purchase, can be found on the report’s web page here.

The post What’s To Become of Search? BIA/Kelsey Report Analyzes Shift from Web to Mobile Discovery appeared first on Mobile Marketing Watch.

Now, on the heels of Google’s plan to up the mobile accessibility, Bing announced it is tagging results links with a “Mobile Friendly” icon.

“Mobile search continues to surge ahead and grow as a percentage of overall internet search queries,” Bing noted in a blog post. “In November 2014, we shared our plans to make significant investments towards understanding the mobile friendliness of web pages. Since then, we have been investigating various approaches that leverage mobile friendliness to deliver the best possible mobile search experience on Bing.”

The mobile-friendly tag allows mobile users to quickly identify the results most likely to perform well on their mobile devices.

And that’s not all. Bing will also be rolling out mobile friendliness as a signal in ranking.

“Our approach to mobile friendliness as a ranking signal balances the need to improve the ranking for mobile-friendly pages, with the continued focus on delivering the most relevant results for a given query. This means that for mobile searches on Bing, you can always expect to see the most relevant results for a search query ranked higher, even if some of them are not mobile-friendly.”

But Bing — and other search engines — really, really want websites to get mobile-friendly as fast as possible.

To that end, Bing’s blog post included a succinct tutorial of what that actually means — from keeping click buttons distinct to formatting for the mobile screen.

Webmasters will get help from Bing, as it is developing a tool to help them analyze their webpages.

“This tool will become available a few weeks from now and help Webmasters find and fix areas of their site that suffer from mobile friendliness issues,” Bing stated. “Understanding the factors that influence mobile friendliness will help serve our growing mobile user base much better.”

Webmasters will have to make something transparent: their CSS and script files, so Bing can do the analyses.

The post Bing To Go Mobile-Friendly for Search; Offers Tutorial in How It Works appeared first on Mobile Marketing Watch.

The company just released its first quarter 2015 “Digital Marketing Report,” revealing some noteworthy trends.

The report evaluates “trends in SEO, paid-search, social media, display advertising, product ads, comparison e-commerce sites, and much more, supplying detailed and comprehensive insights into digital-marketing trends by utilizing data from its huge client base,” according to a provided statement.

Some critical themes?

• Performance trends for Bing and Google show a halt in the Google click hike as well as a steady rise in Bing Ad traffic.
• Smartphones continue to enjoy a rise in traffic for both organic and paid search channels. (Google’s search engine updates to optimize for mobile could see brands without mobile-friendly websites seeing downfall in SERPs.
• Spending on Google sunk from 19 percent in Q4 2014 to 13 percent in Q1 2015, since click traffic increased just by 0.2 percent year-over-year and rose 13 percent by cost-per-click.

“Google’s Click rate was adversely influenced by many facets, including slow tablet growth, the growth of PLA (Product Listing Ad) market, in addition to the loss of Google’s default search supplier status on Firefox, which led to almost 2 percent drift of U.S. search traffic share to Yahoo,” according to Green Circle.

The post Green Circle Agency Report Confirms Google Search Trend Drift appeared first on Mobile Marketing Watch.

The findings indicated that a majority of respondents plan to increase their search marketing spend across desktops and mobile in 2015.

Spending will continue to climb even though marketers still struggle with measuring performance and results.

Among the key findings shared with MMW include:

• Three out of four companies plan to increase 2015 search marketing budgets: 70 percent of survey respondents indicated search marketing budgets will increase in 2015, while 25 percent said budgets will stay the same and only five percent claimed their search marketing budgets will decrease.
• Digital marketers struggle with measuring performance, results and outcomes of digital marketing efforts: Only 10 percent of respondents cited they are able to measure their digital marketing efforts and investments through the entire sales funnel.
• Digital marketers are still not thinking mobile-first: Almost half of the survey respondents reported incorporating mobile strategies into both their search engine optimization (SEO) and pay-per-click (PPC) campaigns, while a staggering 30 percent of the respondents said they were not considering mobile use at all in their search marketing strategies.

“Measuring performance and integrating mobile strategies is an ongoing challenge for most digital marketers. With these survey findings, it is safe to say measuring performance, results and outcomes of digital marketing efforts and investments is still something all digital teams struggle with at some level,” says Krista LaRiviere, CEO of gShift. “This represents a significant opportunity for the industry to apply strategic, tactical and technical tools to measure performance and help prove the value of digital marketing investments.”

The post Search Marketing Budgets Gaining Steam in 2015 appeared first on Mobile Marketing Watch.

If you’re like most people in the world, you go to Google.

Recent research from Define Media Group, which tracked traffic to 94 sites across various industry verticals between January and November 2014, asserts that Google accounted for a whopping 93 percent of online and mobile web organic search traffic worldwide.

That pretty much leaves Bing and Yahoo in the dust, with a combined (and paltry) 6 percent.

“Recent analysis by Merkle | RKG found similar results when looking at the US only,” says eMarketer. “The search and digital marketing agency reported that in Q3 2014, Google increased its share of organic search visits in the US to 83 percent. This was at the expense of Bing, which saw its portion fall slightly to 8 percent; Yahoo held steady at around 7 percent.”

These stats show a bigger a bigger gaggle of searchers for Google than a recent analysis by comScore, which pegged Google’s share of monthly online searches in the U.S. at 67.3 percent.

When analyzing desktop only, comScore found that Microsoft sites accounted for 19.4 percent and Yahoo sites for 10.0 percent.

Word to the wise: the whole shooting match is now driven by mobile.

“RKG reported that mobile was fueling overall organic search growth,” added eMarketer. “Between Q3 2013 and Q3 2014, mobile organic search visits rose 45 percent, compared with just 3 percent for overall organic. Google ruled here, too, with an 85.6 percent share of U.S. mobile organic search visits coming from the site, vs. 8.4 percent for Yahoo and 5.6 percent for Bing.”

The post Googling as a Way of Life: It Grabs More than 90 Percent of Global Search Traffic appeared first on Mobile Marketing Watch.

Since mobile consumership has continued to grow by leaps and bounds, particularly over the last two years, many advertisers are shifting their pay-per-click advertising dollars from online to mobile.

According to research by San Diego-based Covario and highlighted recently by Search Engine Watch, one third of last quarter’s paid search advertising was spent on mobile.

When it comes to dollar-to-dollar spending, it looks something like this:

• 67% desktop
• 18% mobile
• 15% tablet

The increase in both mobile consumer adoption and mobile ad spending is most prevalent in North and South America, particularly the United States, Canada, Mexico, Brazil, and Chile.

To read the article in full please visit Search Engine Watch.

The post Paid Search Advertising Continues to Go Mobile appeared first on Mobile Marketing Watch.

As a result — of course — competition is heating up.  Major players in the U.S. market currently include Google, Point Inside, Micello, FastMall, and HERE, who together currently cover more than 25,000 venues in the US.

As the demand for indoor LBS is increasing, and more business organizations are adopting indoor LBS, the number of venues in the US is expected to increase to almost 200,000 by 2016. Thus, the increasing availability of indoor venue maps is an emerging trend that could fuel the growth of the market during the forecast period.

“According to the report, one of the main drivers in this market is the increased use of indoor LBS by consumers,” according to a report summary shared with MMW. “Most people in the U.S. spend more than 80 percent of their daily time indoors. In addition, more than 85 percent of mobile data in the US is generated from indoor locations. Advancements in positioning technology and survey methodology have made it easy to determine the location of a smart device.”

The growth of personal communication device use have enabled the use of indoor positioning fed through local wireless networks. As a result, consumers now use indoor LBS in shopping malls, multiplexes, universities, campuses, and airports. It’s also a mainstay at hospitals, stadiums, government offices, museums, convention centers, hotels, resorts, and even in parking areas.

The post U.S. Indoor Location Based Search Could Grow 45% appeared first on Mobile Marketing Watch.

The following is a guest contributed post from Cristian Arno, the founder and managing director of Lingo24, a translation and localization company.

As more and more of us take our internet browsing and shopping onto mobile devices, small screens are becoming increasingly big business. According to a report from RKG, more than  a quarter of search traffic in 2013 was mobile rather than static. Google’s Matt Cutts suggested that mobile might overtake static search overall by the end of this year. In some territories the tipping point has already been reached. Smartphones have been the most common way for people to connect to the internet in India and China since 2012, making mobile optimization even more important for businesses looking to expand into emerging markets.

It’s not only the increasing volume of mobile traffic that’s important but also the differing usage habits of mobile users. According to a report by Google nine out of ten smartphone users have taken action as a result of a mobile search. For more than two thirds (68%) this involved visiting a business (either online or in person) and for 52% it involved making a direct purchase.

According to a report by Amethon however, only a third of mobile visitors made it past a site’s landing page. It’s crucial that you optimize for mobile visitors, placing important information prominently and helping them to navigate easily.

Use a prominent search box

Perhaps the most important aspect of mobile site search is a search box, which allows visitors to navigate to the relevant part of your site without having to trawl through various navigation bars and menus. Make this search box prominent, placing it towards the top of the page and marking it clearly. It can also be handy to include the search box on subsequent pages, allowing users to navigate further without having to click the ‘Home’ button.

Make things easier with auto-complete

Typing is not always easy on a smartphone or other mobile device and it generally pays to make the task of searching for information as convenient as possible. Auto-complete is a great feature because it suggests terms when visitors start typing the first letters of a keyword, helping your mobile users to find what they want with less effort.

A related option is auto-suggest, which suggests alternatives or related products based on the visitor’s search history. If you’ve ever used Amazon or eBay you’ll be familiar with the concept. The Deb Shops chain reported a 20 per cent increase in purchases for users exploring with a ‘More like this…’ feature.

Use infinite scrolling for search results

Mobile users do not usually want to have to click through lots of different pages to see the complete range of products or other relevant search results, waiting for each one to load and having to click back to see previously viewed items.

Using infinite scrolling can rectify this issue by automatically loading in more results as the user scrolls towards the bottom of the page. This ‘infinite scroll’ allows the user to find what they want with a minimum of actions and to scroll back up to revisit or compare items further up the list. This approach tends to work best with a single column of results sized to match the width of the device’s screen.

Localize information

Mobile devices are obviously ideally suited to check the ‘net on the go. It’s perhaps not surprising that, according to Google, 95% of smartphone users have used their devices to look for local information, with 88% of those having taken action within a day.

Many are looking for physical locations that they can visit in person. If you are not a purely e-commerce venture, you should make your contact information easy to find. As well as visiting websites, some people still prefer to speak to a human being and you should also make it easy to call. For mobile devices a clickable ‘Call’ button is often preferable to simply providing a number.

You can also use the GPS technology built into smartphones to provide localized information based on the visitor’s current location. The Loews Hotels chain’s mobile site, for example, uses locational technology to highlight and suggest the hotel nearest to the visitor’s current location.

Push your promotions

If you have items on sale or other promotions, it makes sense to emphasize those promotions when your visitor searches for related items. This can be used in conjunction with an auto-suggest feature, but don’t be too pushy or make banners too intrusive. Any displays should also be keyword-driven, meaning they are still relevant to the original search.

Mobile users do browse and surf the web but they will also frequently visit a site with a specific task or purpose in mind. By optimizing your site search, you make it easier for them to complete that task, which is beneficial for you and them alike.

The post Are Your Mobile Visitors Getting the Most Out of Your Site Search? appeared first on Mobile Marketing Watch.

“Mobile app users skew a little bit younger, below the 35-year-old threshold, but our desktop audience is still holding strong between a 34-to-55-year-old audience,” says Brad Maglinger, CMO of Mapquest, in a recent eMarketer interview.

When eMarketer asked if map numbers would continue to grow along with the upsurge in mobile, he was unequivocal.

“Absolutely. The mapping function within mobile is a core piece of all applications, ranging from Yelp to MapQuest,” said Maglinger. “Maps are an underlying feature to every single app that’s deployed on the mobile device today. Obviously there will be a ceiling to that growth, but, yes, it will continue to grow.”

In addition to privacy and other issues, the interview broached the opportunities for marketing via maps. Are they effective?

“They are,” argues Maglinger. “We just signed a great partnership with Major League Baseball that expands game-day experiences with original contest content. There are map integrations within their At the Ballpark app and website, as well as 30 team websites.”

As for maps being a cornerstone of local digital marketing, Maglinger was upbeat.

“If you look at our mobile app, we have this concept of layers, where you can bring your favorite brands right into the experience and right into your route,” he explains. “That is the cornerstone that we’ve been talking about so frequently.”

The post MapQuest CMO: Maps An Underlying Feature to Every App on Mobile appeared first on Mobile Marketing Watch.

That doesn’t escape execs like Fred Thiel, Chairman and CEO of Local Corporation, a local advertising technology company that works to connect consumers and businesses through products and services such as Local.com and Krillion, a local shopping platform aggregating data from 120,000 stores.

In a recent eMarketer interview, Thiel talked about the “conditioning” modern consumers have undergone.

“Consumers are definitely conditioned to use Google or another search engine for search on desktop—excluding travel searches,” Thiel says. “For travel, we see more mobile usage, and in that case, they’re usually using an app which is specific to whatever travel site used such as KAYAK or TripAdvisor. That category is pretty much the first to be “appified,” as some have termed it.”

What about shopping and getting basic information?

“When it comes to shopping and general discovery, on desktop it’s still Google or a search engine, or a particular shopping or deal site when the customer wants something specific,” Thiel notes. “To quantify, 73 percent of product research is done using a search engine, 33 percent is done through specific shopping sites, and 24 percent is through apps.”

When eMarketer’s interviewer asks Thiel about the goals of retailers when it comes to consumers searching via mobile, he says “Most of the top 100 retailers have omnichannel programs in place, with sophisticated and well-developed ecommerce sites and brick-and-mortar stores.”

In other words — according to Thiel — a sale is a sale, and that’s what counts.

“More and more, with retailers like Wal-Mart and Target, the brick-and-mortar location is becoming a localized distribution center,” Thiel explains. “It doesn’t matter if you’re buying online, picking up in-store, having something delivered in a store or ordering it online for home delivery. Retailers just don’t care. What they care about is that the purchase is made, and they’re setting up their systems so that omnichannel becomes the core mantra.”

There are more juicy tidbits here.

The post Fred Thiel Interview: Consumer Search Patterns via Desktop, Tablet, Smartphone appeared first on Mobile Marketing Watch.