What Does The Future Hold for Mobile Search?

MoreVisibility - March 23, 2007

I recently encountered a good article summarizing the mobile search experience, its challenges and the problems advertisers face when turning to mobile advertising. Mobile devices are used more and more throughout the US and worldwide for business purposes. People access their emails, get news, weather and sports updates, and some surf the net on the go. Google and Yahoo have already introduced and operate email clients suitable for mobile devices, and the major search engines offer mobile customized search versions.
But is mobile search really convenient?

Mobile search tools are constantly being evaluated, experimented with and developed in order to expand the network of users and advertisers, and make the Mobile advertising a legitimate market. 3 major obstacles are currently a “bone in the neck” for those wishing to boost the mobile advertising start up:
1) What type of results should be returned for a search query?
2) How should a user’s location be determined?
and most challenging:
3) How to deal with the limitation of a small display screen?

The answers are still not clear. Returning search results may not be difficult to resolve, but the question remains how many results to return without requiring the user to scroll? MSN has an advertising model called “pay per call” which appears to be suitable for mobile phones. To date, there doesn’t appear to be any other paid search advertising programs for mobile search.

In the future we are more likely to see mobile versions of websites and potentially online advertisements that are interactive and allow actions such as ordering products and/or services. As of now, the market is still in its infancy and may not be a profitable venue for internet marketers, but who knows what the future holds?

For the article: http://www.easynet.co.il/sem_articles/mobile_search.php