Interesting Blog from Mohit Agrawal on the future of Mobile search.
How is Mobile Search different?
The fundamental difference between the mobile search and PC search is the access device. The screen size of the mobile phone is a constraint and hence the internet search results need to be modified. Even the input keyboard is different and the search string could be shorter which means the search result has to be intuitive.
The second difference is in the usage pattern of mobile. Unlike PC, the mobile phone is a ubiquitous device and people normally search for “at the moment” kind of thing. This means they search for nearest restaurant, retail points, service centers or mobile content. Their need is immediate and the patience or tolerance is low. They are looking for relevant results that are actionable like they need a taxi that can reach them fast and they should be able to book the taxi using their mobile phone. This means that the result needs to be location aware and should also give the phone number of the taxi company.
Thirdly, the consumer expectations changes with the time of day for the search results e.g. an afternoon search for restaurants means that the results should be about restaurants amenable to business meetings whereas, in the evening the same search should retrieve fun places like pubs or lively music restaurants.
Lastly, the difference is in the frequency of search and the number of attempts for each search.
On PC, a surfer changes his search string multiple times before he gets the right results while on a mobile, nobody is likely to change the search string more than a couple of times. Also, people search at least 4-5 different things on PC everyday but a typical mobile internet user searches something only once in 4-5 days.
There are quite a few videos which he uses to explain the point and they are interesting watch. I strongly recommend to go and have a look at the blog.
Another thing that will become important is the advertisements within the search. If I am looking for a day out on the weekend and if I get another option while searching for my destination then I may be tempted. While out and about, search for restaurants or the nearest MacD may may give some tempting offers about from other restaurants.
I can see lots of potential in mobile search and I am sure that there are companies that are working towards them. Its just matter of time before another new player like YouTube, Facebook or Skype may become leader of this domain.
By the way, I tried Google voice search on my Blackberry Bold with amazing results. Long long ago I used to use a software to recognise speech for writing word documents and it was a pain to teach it to recognise your voice, etc. The google search is amazing as it mostly gets the right thing you are searching for. Full credit to them.
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