Jobs: “On Mobile, Search Hasn’t Happened”?
As I had expected in my previous post about mobile advertising and how Apple will enter the mix, today Apple announced iAd mobile as part of its launch of OS 4.0. For those of you that are interested in what you need to know about iPhone OS 4.0, check out this article from Mobile Crunch. However, the point of this post is to actually dispute a statement made by Steve Jobs that I (and some other fellow Intouch co-workers) felt was not factually based. Jobs announced during the announcement today that:
A lot of developers turn to advertising – and we think these current advertisements really suck. If you look at advertisements on a phone, it’s not like on a desktop. On a desktop, its about search. On mobile, search hasn’t happened. People aren’t searching on their phones. People are spending their time in apps. The average user spends over 30 minutes using apps on their phone.
On mobile, search hasn’t happened? I would beg to differ with that statement. At a very broad level, I would agree that search is not nearly as dominant in terms of mobile web activity compared to how people engage the web on a desktop computer. However, looking at trended numbers over time, it is clear that the use of search on the mobile web is becoming more and more prominent. This trend will only continue as SmartPhone adoption continues to expand (both in the US and globally). iPhone adoption has been steady, while the launch of new Android phones on a regular basis has made the Android platform a fairly common opportunity as well. Both Apple OS and Android OS offer mobile users simple ability to search the web.
The above graph shows the mobile search trend on Google over the past 12 months. These trends are shown for health-related terms like cancer, diabetes, cholesterol, stroke, etc. I kept it broad so that we could get a realistic snapshot of the search trend over time. Comparing actual numbers, mobile search volume is only about 2% of desktop search volume, which surely illustrates that it hasn’t taken off on mobile quite as well on desktop. However, given the fact that there are over 14 billion monthly searches on Google “desktop”, that still leaves a lot of search volume on mobile.
The point is, pharma marketers (and marketers in general) shouldn’t lose sight of the value of mobile search campaigns (both natural and paid search efforts).
Related Links
- The Mobile Web is Finally Here: Are You Ready? – Search Engine Land
- A Guide to Mobile Search Marketing
Disclaimer: The postings on this site are my own and do not necessarily represent the opinions or positions of Intouch Solutions.
3 Important Facts About Mobile SEO
In an article on PC World entitled Google Betting Big on Mobile, Executive Says, a Google executive says that mobile search volume has increased by over 5 times. Keyword research I have done recently supports the increased volume of searches, but my example is not quite 5 times higher. For an example, I took a very broad keyword “diabetes” and found a historical trend of the top 50 keywords associated with this term. I pulled the search volume estimates specifically for Google mobile search volume.
Going back to March 2009 and running through February 2010, we see a nearly 2x higher volume (84K searches in March 2009 compared to 135K in February 2010). Perhaps the growth of search for pharmaceutical and health-related searches is not growing as rapidly as other industries, but the growth is significant. A point made by the Google executive in this article was the fact that these are for the most part completely new searches.
So, what are the three facts I wanted to point out?
Fact 1: Mobile Search Is A Whole New Searcher
What do I mean by this? Well, as mentioned above the Google executive is quoted as saying searches occurring in Google mobile are largely searches that did not previously exist. Specifically, typical times where you would see desktop search decline (lunch breaks, dinner)…those are the times where mobile search spikes. So Google, Yahoo, and Bing, with their mobile search engines are capturing a whole new type of searcher.
Fact 2: Mobile Search Advertising is Hugely Important
If you have any hope of capturing mobile users when they are looking, you have to consider the various mobile advertising opportunities. Google has invested largely in this niche advertising area. Their mobile search ad targeting is simple and intuitive to capture mobile users at the right time. They have developed their own “in-app” advertising service for Android and iPhone applications. Their recent acquisition of AdMob shows that Google is serious about developing a top-tier mobile advertising channel.
Fact 3: Mobile SEO is a Wide Open Opportunity for Pharma SEO
Mobile versions of pharmaceutical websites are few and far between from what I have been able to discover. The faith of heavy graphics and flash-intensive sites by many pharma sites has limited the ability for pharma SEO to be effective on mobile devices. The discussion around social media is extremely important, but the emerging media not being discussed is mobile websites. Plenty of pharma companies may be ready to build an iPhone application, but the piece of mobile they are missing is a mobile site. I would anticipate that anyone willing to invest the time in mobile site development and mobile SEO will see strong results from their mobile channel. While the volume of health-related searches is not growing as quickly as other industries, it is growing rapidly and will continue to do so.
Disclaimer: The postings on this site are my own and do not necessarily represent the opinions or positions of Intouch Solutions.
