Mobile Changes Behavior, Google Finds
There already appear to be pluses and minuses to user behavior on mobile devices, compared to desktop behavior, Google says. On the plus side, adding click-to-call features on ads shown on the high end mobile phones “are doing very well,” Google says. “The click through rates go up six percent when you put ads with a phone number; eight percent when you put a local address,” said Jonathan Rosenberg, Google SVP.
On the minus side, users on a mobile phone people are actually less likely to consummate a transaction, compared to PC users, because of the logistics and hassle of entering the credit card or signing onto and navigating a browser on a smaller screen.
But there is little question that mobile search behavior is exploding. Searches from Android mobile devices grew 300 percent in the first half of 2010, Google says. Over the last two years Android-based search requests have grown 500 percent, said Patrick Pichette, Google CFO.
And though Google has no empirical data on the matter, Rosenberg says that, “intuitively,” one would guess mobile search is additive and incremental to desktop search. Rosenberg’s reasoning is that users at a desk, with a PC and a smartphone, are logically going to search using the PC. It’s just easier.
On the other hand, when users are out and about, without a PC in front of them, it seems likely that most searches are of the sort that will not be delayed until the user gets back to the desk. “I don’t think that there is much evidence that that’s the case,” Rosenberg said.
So Rosenberg guesses the majority of mobile searchers are incremental.
Also, what Google has seen so far is that there are slightly different usage patterns across desktop and mobile. “You tend to see more use of the mobile devices on weekends,” he said.
