Mobile Local Search (Mo-Lo) Still Has Miles to Go

Although more and more companies are introducing mobile search services the experience remains bad enough that most people avoid using them, according to Greg Sterling. He’s got a point, in many cases the results returned are not in a particularly easy to use way and the time it takes to get them can be excessive…but there is a demand and once technology and software catches up with the vision of having all the information you need available through your mobile phone there will be a huge opportunity.
The report which instigated this post was a free white paper from OneUpWeb on mobile search engines, and how marketers can use them to advertise their products and services. It’s a pretty good read and covers the mobile search space comprehensively, especially for people unfamiliar with the background technology…for example describing WAP, WML and xHTML (most browsers now use WAP2.0/xHTML) and a brief overview of how the major search engines operate.
Some shortfalls are recognised…”Although Japan and western Europe have well developed mobile web indices, the world is short of quality WAP sites in general. Most WAP sites are poorly designed, underused, unstable and limited in their content and service.”
Some tips were also given on how to optimize the experience for users, including using short search terms for pay-per-click and local search engines (because people dislike typing in long words on mobiles), having “easy-scroll” choices on the pages searchers go to, keeping location information updated and using short title tags.
Related stories:
AOL Enters Mobile Search Fray
CSIRO Video Search Goes Global
Google Moves SMS Into Beta

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