Can you believe that 2011 is over?! Can you believe I’ve been living in Australia for more than a year now?! Me neither. But alas, it’s the end of the year, people! That means best-of lists and future predictions. I prefer the predictions. They’re more fun. And when you’re wrong, nothing bad happens.

So, what’s going to happen next year?

AdNews says it’s the year of gamification, NFC (near field communication), mobile marketing and social television.

E-marketer says that music will continue to grow in the cloud, people will stop “checking in” to look cool and only use it to get a deal, and content will become more magnetic.

The Mayans say the world is going to end! Scary.

Here’s what I think:

Mobile will keep growing astronomically. Anyone under the age of 15 will be completely disgusted at the thought of a pay phone. There’s no turning back from being connected all the time. Phones will do more stuff, it’ll be cooler stuff (html 5!) and they’ll be permanently attached our hands (if they aren’t already).

Bing will get bigger. It can’t be a one-engine world forever in Australia. They’ve got ads planned for this year. They’re doing relatively well in the States with almost 15% market share. And, they have pretty pictures.

Android will continue to grow. If you still only have your App written for iPhones, get someone to make it for Android, now.

People will use social media for good. OK, this is about 50% hope and 50% prediction, but charities and organisations looking to do good in the world will figure out how to make social work for them in a big way.

Cloud computing will catch on for the masses. OK, people still might not recognise that what they’re using is cloud computing, but non-techies will be saving things on the cloud, utilising the cloud for music and photos and videos and life.

The companies who succeed the most this year will be the ones who create fun. Fun in their ads, in their engagement, in their workplace, just more fun! Companies are getting personalities, and people are buying from companies that they like. And working for companies that they like. And they like them because they’re fun!

I will receive the most epic birthday presents ever. It’s not until April, so you’ve got time.

People will feel like total losers when the world doesn’t end, but we’ll get a hefty population boom 9 months later. Yay for “we’re all gonna die” action!

Happy holidays, all. And we’ll see you in 2012!

To compliment Google Think:Mobile Event & Research, they released a funky infographic to depict the Evolution of the Australian Mobile consumer.

We thought it was too good not to share with you:

Last week at the Google Think:Mobile event, their latest Mobile research was unveiled. Google teamed up with IPSOS Research and interviewed over 30,000 people across 30 countries to survey the impact of smartphones on consumer. The video below shows what they discovered about us here in Australia:

Key Aussies Mobile Stats:

• 33% more likely to do mobile real estate searches than the British & Americans
• 65% more likely to do mobile banking than the British
• 14% more likely to do mobile banking than the Americans
• 36% of respondents said they expected to use the web more on their smartphone in the future vs. 28% for the PC
• 2 in 5 Australians search on their smartphones daily (as opposed to 3 in 5 on their PC)
• Throughout 2010 mobile transactions for PayPal in Australia increased by 25% month-on-month

Main uses for Mobile Search:

• Find local businesses
• Online purchases
• Price / Product Comparison
• Social Networking

Ryan Hayward, Google’s mobile product marketing manager for the APAC region has said:

“The rise of smartphones is dramatically increasing the use of the internet overall in Australia and … we’re seeing mobile usage and smartphone usage starting to approach or even match PC usage.”

Hayward goes on to say:

“We found that with Google Maps, which is one of our marquee products, usage on the mobile phone has already exceeded the desktop globally. The smartphone is not a toy, it’s extremely fundamental and Google is adjusting to it very quickly.”

Hayward has described this study as the first of its kind worldwide (“it’s the most countries and the most people with the same questions”).

Google plans to release the full report for free in the following months on a website called ‘Our Mobile Planet’.

“It’s not too late to be early” – Nick Leeder, Managing Director of Google.

It is predicted that half of the Australian population will use Mobile Smartphones by the end of 2011 – right now 37% of Australians own a smartphone making us a world leader in Mobile Smartphone Adoption. The message of “get in early” was repeated to us throughout the day at Google’s Think:Mobile 2011 event highlighting the enormous opportunities in making your online presence compatible with mobile devices – now!

On Thursday 8 Sept, myself and several others from Outrider’s SEM and SEO team made the trip down to the Sydney City Recital Hall to hear a gathering of senior marketing executives, industry visionaries, and agency leaders discuss all things mobile. The agenda included: William Easton and Nick Leeder Director of Mobile and Managing Director at Google, Foad Fadaghi Research Director from Telsyte, Hugo Barra Product Director at Android-Google, David Thodey CEO of Telstra, Jason Pellegrino Head of Mobile Ads Google, Don Meji CEO of Dominos Pizza, Andrew Murrell GM Marketing at Commonwealth Bank, and Lucie Austin Regional Marketing Director Coca-Cola.

At the end of the event, we left inspired to start designing our mobile strategies and with plenty of ideas on how to do this. The following is a summary of the key learnings from the day.

Welcome

“Welcome to Think:Tech 2011. It wouldn’t be a mobile conference if we didn’t ask you to switch your phones ON”

– William Easton, Director of Mobile at Google.

William Easton was MC and did a great job of leading the event. Interestingly, he asked everyone to switch on their mobile phones during the event as we would be doing real-time interactive polls and Twitter feed questions via Mobile. The first poll is shown in the picture below.

Nick Leeder was up next and set the mood for the day. Leeder showed his enthusiasm toward the Mobile movement -

“Some ideas move mountains and create rivers of gold. Google thinks Mobile is a mountain mover and will not only create rivers of gold but also dry them up”.

Google’s Managing Director was very enthusiastic about Mobile Smartphone adoption and it was obvious that Mobile was not to be overlooked.

Mobile trends in the Australian market

Foad Fadaghi is the Director of Research at Telsyte and presented some eye-opening statistics on Mobile adoption and other usage stats.

• Australia is at the forefront of Mobile Smartphone adoption with 37% penetration. Singapore is the only country with higher adoption.
• Australian Smartphones sales are growing at a rapid rate. Mobile market penetration is currently at 75% and is expected to be at 96% by 2014.

• iOS is still the leader at 42% of the market followed by Android at 29%. Android is growing at a high rate.
• Tablets reported 241% growth in 2010 to 2011. Predicted to grow more rapidly as Content & Apps mature.
• Tablets are predicted to cannibalise eBooks, netbooks and laptops.
• Tablet penetration is predicted to soar to 24% of Australian population by 2014. Currently at 8%.

The Mobile User of Tomorrow

Hugo Barra is the Product Management Director at Android-Google and demonstrated several intriguing live Android demos. He also introduced the theory “Mobile First”, which was coined by Google CEO Eric Schmidt. Mobile First is the new rule that all Google products will be designed for the Mobile medium first, as he sees this is where future users will be spending most of their time and provisioning most services. More info on Mobile First.

The Android Operating System is gaining momentum with 550,000 activations per day and was the center of Hugo’s first demo of the day using his Samsung Galaxy tablet device. We got a sneak preview of Android’s next operating system 4.0 deliciously named “Ice Cream Sandwich”. Cool features included: new layouts that sped up the way tasks are performed, graphics that push the limits of the GPU and an exciting new feature – facial recognition! This was the coolest feature of Android 4.0, utilizing the front-facing camera to track the user’s facial gestures. Imagine being able to go back in a web browser by frowning or being able to open an application by smiling. Google is truly innovating how people will be able to use tablet devices.

Hugo’s next demo involved the use of the Samsung Galaxy Smartphone. Chrome-to-phone is a new extension that allows anything in a web browser to be sent to an Android mobile. Hugo was able to highlight a phone number from Google maps and send it straight to the phone’s dialer with a single click, removing the manual legwork.  NFC (near field communication) is a feature that is built into all the latest Android phones that allows wireless communication between the Smartphone and any device with an NFC chip. Hugo demonstrated several uses for this technology including swiping your phone to a tag in a retail shop for deals/price/info and tapping your phone to another phone to share data.

Google Goggles on the Smartphone was another cool demo. Hugo was able to take a photo of Sudoku Puzzle in a magazine, and using cloud computing, upload it to the Goggles App which solved the puzzle for him.

The obvious takeaway of this segment was that Google is changing the way people interact with mobile devices and increasing the efficiency of how mobiles are used.

The Future of Mobile in Australia

It’s safe to say that David Thodey CEO of Telstra is in a good position to provide insights on where mobile usage is headed in the future. David is seeing mobile usage on the Telstra network double every month, consistent with Telsyte’s research. He went on to describe the types of speeds that the mobile network is heading in and predicts 1GBps connections in the near future. This will only encourage more mobile usage and mobile accessible multi-media content as the connections mature. David predicts that in the future we will be seeing more and more everyday devices connected to the internet, painting a picture of futuristic internet enabled vehicles and appliances, the new breed of smart mobile devices.

It’s not too late to be early

Jason Pelligrino Industry Leader of Mobile Ads at Google emphasized the rapid expansion of mobile adoption – “The pace of change is phenomenal”. In 2010 there were 500 million enabled phones, this has expanded to 1 Billion in 2011. He predicts at this pace, the number of smart phones will exceed the number of PC’s by Q4 2012. His analysis shows that we are still only at the beginning of the Market Cycle and explains that those businesses that get in early will reap the benefits of being market leaders. He also provided some interesting stats:

• 48% of Smartphone users go to bed with their phone within mobile reach (Poorani from our office is part of this audience, she watches YouTube in bed)
• 60% use Smartphones on their commute to work
• 75% use their smartphones in off-time at work (off-time being any time they aren’t in front of the desktop)
• 4 million Australians use mobile internet banking
• 72% use their mobile for comparison shopping. 1 in every 5 of these users have changed their mind in a retail store as a result of this mobile comparison shopping.
• 25% of Smartphone users have bought using their mobile phone
• 66% of local searches are from a mobile device – half of these searches result in an action

To emphasise the prematurity of the Mobile lifecycle, Jason shared with us that globally only 1 in every 5 companies have mobile optimized websites. The difference that an 18kb mobile site compared to a 400kb full site on a GPRS connection can be a make or break difference for online leads and transactions. Jason believes that every business should be making their entry into the mobile market by using the following easy steps:

1. Develop & integrate your mobile strategy
2. Build your mobile destination (try Google Mobile Site Builder)
3. Connect with your users – let them know you’re mobile enabled and they will come
4. Mobilise your business with data (use analytics to build your mobile strategy)

Mobile Pioneers

This segment of the event provided the audience with case studies of market leaders in the Mobile internet market.

Don Meji CEO of Dominos Pizza was first up. Dominos was the first in their market to develop a mobile App. This App allows Smartphone users to easily place their orders online and also track the progression of their order, which previously was invisible. To date, it’s one of the most successful iPhone apps accounting for 40% of total digital sales and generates $1 million in revenue each week. Don says that it “empowers the customer with the invisible aspect of pizza”. The Android app which was only recently released had 200,000 orders on its first day of being live. “By being first, you get the market. Your customers are there waiting”. Don provides two basic rules for Mobile App development:

1. Build Apps that people will use more than once – people delete apps and novelty wears off.
2. Don’t build Apps just for the sake of building an app

The next case study was provided by Andrew Murell GM of Channel Marketing at Commonwealth Bank. Andrew also emphasised the increasing adoption of mobile, predicting that “in 2 years, mobile banking will overtake online banking. It will be easier to make transactions on your mobile than on a desktop”. Commonwealth has been working on furthering Mobile Smartphone integration to the business by providing a holistic approach integrating social media to their mobile apps. Andrew predicts Commonwealth contactless bank payments via Mobile phones will be available by December 2011.

Lucie Austin, Regional Marketing Director from Coca-Cola was an unlikely candidate to speak at a Mobile event, as in her own words, “fast moving consumer goods feels far away from Mobile”. However, Coca-Cola have great success with promotions via the Mobile channel. “Mobile is in line with our story-telling… it allows for ‘Right Here & Right now’, Rather than ‘Right place at the right time’”. Coca-Cola understands the importance of the mobile channel and heavily uses SMS to promote their fast moving goods. So far, their SMS campaigns have received over 4 trillion SMS messages world-wide for a variety of their promotions.  As well as this, Lucie demonstrated an impressive Coca-Cola iPhone App that utilised iPhone’s accelerometer and sound recognition capability to allow for game-play interaction with a Coca-Cola TVC.

To finish up the day, Nick Leeder spoke again leaving us with the message

“Get in [to Mobile] now. We’re only at the tip of the iceberg.”

These days, I’m sure if you ran into somebody from Google they would do their best to make you believe that mobile is the next big thing to happen in the world of online marketing. And there definitely is a strong reason why you should start to take note.

The number of mobile Internet users is growing at an incredible rate. Consumers are increasingly reliant on their mobile devices for information while they are on the go, be it on a train or bus, reading news articles, checking sports scores, or searching for nearby restaurants or movies.

According to research data released by Google, mobile internet usage and engagement is exploding in terms of growth:

• More people will access the internet using a mobile device than via a PC by 2013
• 9 out of 10 Australians have mobiles (43% have smartphones)
• 63% of Australians connections are 3G (Globally only 20%)

Growth in Mobile Usage

Small Screen – Big Opportunity: Google’s mantra

This all translates into a huge opportunity for advertisers to connect with their customers anytime, anywhere. With Google mobile ads, you can engage with the fast-growing mobile audience while they search and browse content on their mobile devices. And you can do so throughout the whole day, as consumers have their mobile devices close by at any given moment or location.

You have the flexibility of choosing from text, display, and even rich media ads. Simply place your ads across mobile search pages, mobile websites via the Google Display Network (GDN), mobile applications or YouTube mobile.

Display / Banner Advertising on Mobile – Looking Beyond Mobile Search

You must be thinking that we haven’t yet fully explored the mobile market for Search, so why should be talk about Display advertising on mobile?

I have a strong belief that Search & Display go hand-in-hand on any device, with mobile devices being no exception.

As highlighted in my previous blog post, there is a high level of synergy between these two approaches and Display does have a positive impact on overall Search metrics.

We can definitely extrapolate this theory to mobile devices as well. In fact, Display advertising on mobile is a great way for advertisers to engage smartphone users with compelling and interactive experiences. This is particularly useful for online retail / e-commerce business, where it’s vital to give customers immediate ways to shop – especially for last-minute purchases.

Another thing that works in favour of mobile advertising is the fact there are fewer advertisers, i.e. ‘early adopters’, using mobile platforms, which means less competition, leading to lower CPCs.

Putting this into practice

One of Outrider’s clients (an online retailer selling magazine subscriptions) concluded that a well-timed Display campaign, targeting mobiles, can deliver positive results and significantly improve the overall efficiency of Display activity.

For this online retailer we decided to experiment by running a test display campaign targeting high-end mobile devices, using the Google Display Network and another, targeting desktop devices.

The test ran in the final days (May 3 – May 8, 2011) in the run up to Mother’s Day.  (A big gifting opportunity for this advertiser each year).

Below are the top line highlights for the 2 display campaigns for the above time period*;

• Mobile display impressions formed  21% of the total impression volume across both sets of display activity
• Clicks from the mobile targeted campaign were an impressive 7% greater than the total from the Desktop campaign
• Click-through rate (CTR%) for the mobile targeted campaign was 0.29% compared to 0.07% for the desktop targeted campaign
• Average Cost-per-click (CPC) for the Mobile display campaign were 50% lower than that of the Desktop campaign

Trying to find a new mobile phone, I had a browse through a mobile carrier’s catalogue embedded in my local morning paper.  While the differentiation between hardware, design and social networking capabilities seemed to be key features of many phones, another key feature was software: Smartphone software to be exact.

Gone are the days when the latest phone technology included a 1.3 megapixel camera. According to ABI Research, 302 Million smartphones were shipped globally in 2010, up 71% from shipments made in 2009.  Google’s most recent CEO is quoted saying “2011 is all about mobile”. So, why is a mobile marketing platform becoming more crucial to businesses?

Mobile Search Network

Mobile search is perpetually growing in Australia and around the world.

With a 3000% increase in searches in the past 3 years, Australians have definitely adopted mobile search. Pub trivia has now turned into a Google fest, rather than the smartest people in the room, the winners are the fastest Australian mobile networks… sorry Vodafone.

Mobile searches accounted for 35% of all restaurant searches and 10% of overall car insurance queries last year in Oz. Even better, globally there were 3 Ferrari’s sold on eBay via a mobile device last year!

Mobile Phone Apps

Demand for smartphones has experienced a shift in the amount of applications or “apps” being developed for businesses. Mobile apps are currently being used in branding and even acquisition campaigns. Let’s take NIB as an example, who advertises their app on TV prompting you to download and organise health coverage via your phone. The best part is that you don’t have to get off your couch while watching the TV, just pick-up your iPhone and start downloading!

Branding through apps is another form of advertising being used by marketers. This is shown in the huge increase of banking apps that have come into the market. These apps target smartphone users by creating a “value add” to the bank’s brand, and also showcasing them as a market leader. The November 10^th 2010 issue of The Australian recorded that 10% of customers with ANZ use a smartphone for everyday banking. Banks know where their customers are and more importantly are doing everything in their power to reach them.

While businesses are utilising apps, many businesses are targeting iPhone users and thus alienating Android users. Android is currently the fastest growing software platform, so it seems that it is a case of chase a few and ignore the masses. We will see one of two things happen in the near future, either more Android apps are created to cater to all of the Android users, or iPhone apps will get more adaptable to be used on multiple platforms.

Location Targeting

Location targeting is relatively new in mobile marketing. Currently, phones are equipped with GPS, (except for the iPhone, which uses A-GPS). In the USA, Starbucks have created an app that allows customers to pay directly from their phone to their credit card.  Can we take it a step further here is Australia and tie it in with location targeting?

What if you were walking down the street and your smartphone received a message:

“Hey Mr Smartphone User, we noticed that you searched for a Coffee Shop just now. Joe’s Coffee is around the corner at 123 Example St. Sydney. If you log into your app, place an order and we will have it ready for you with a complementary Muffin.”

The simple uses of smartphone technology like search, apps and location targeting are just the tip of the iceberg and businesses need to start experimenting and creating optimised websites and campaigns that will target mobile marketing. With the release of 4G networks just around the corner (trials have begun in Perth), mobile marketing campaigns should be included with every companies marketing plan.

Although it all seems very complicated, it’s better than using a shoe.

A long time ago, a wise chap once said to me, “always follow the money”.

Admittedly, it was my older brother speaking and he had just thrown a few pennies down a steep hillside, but the principle still holds true. In corporate terms, change is almost always driven by financial considerations. Sometimes, the consumer wins out because of it… and sometimes changes are made “for our convenience”, but not for our benefit.

In all the breathless excitement over the recent changes to Google SERPs with Places adopting a more prominent position on the page, I’ve seen little analysis or explanation of the “why” – beyond a bland generic “Google are just trying to produce more usable results”.

Wellllll, they are more usable, but the target of the improvements is not necessarily for desktop / laptop users. Recent research by Morgan Stanley (1) has indicated that within 2 years, shipments of smart phones (think iPhone) will cross-over and start to outstrip the shipments of PCs. Smart phones are already predicted to be bigger shippers than what are described as “feature phones” within the year.

That same research indicated that 48% of mobile browser users, use their phone for searches and that the real kick-off point for using a mobile phone as a browser behaviour is the point at which the user gets 3G. Despite all the years of mobile being seen as the coming technology, it really does seem that the train is pulling into that particular station at long last.

So, we have a massive uptake in mobile phone usage and people then use those phones to search, once they have the connection speed. This uptake is so big that SearchEngineLand reports a five-fold increase over the last two years (2). This, according to Mashable, equates to “tens of millions of people [making] searches through Google on mobile devices each week, generating hundreds of millions of searches” (3). In fact, mobile search is now so big, that according to Latitude, it is now bigger in its own right than Bing’s market share (4). That’s a phenomenal 78% growth in the first 9 months of 2010.

Are you starting to see a pattern yet?

People are using their phones more and more to search the web and those phones are much more likely to be smart phones with fully-capable HTML browsers (or in the case of the Apple iPhone, semi-capable, until it works out its differences with Adobe – apologies to all roll-neck lovers out there).

The next piece of the jigsaw puzzle is provided by Diana Pouliot, Google’s director of mobile advertising said that “one-third of all Google searches via the mobile web pertain to some aspect of the searcher’s local environment”. (5)

So…. you have a huge uplift in mobile searches, and 1/3 of all mobile searches relate to something local. From a user’s perspective, what do you do if you’re Google? You respond to this by making the main SERPs result more mobile and “local” friendly and putting the Places results slap-bang in the middle of the SERPs when you think it appropriate.

But wait… there’s more…

Latitude also give us the final clinching statistic (6) that click-through rates (CTR) on mobile search averages 1.32% rather than 1.1%. That may not look like much in percentage basis point terms, but in terms of the actual percentage shift, it’s approximately a 20% increase. When you’re serving millions or billions of ad views a day, a potential 20% increase in CTR should have your revenue team salivating with desire.

You’ve got more surfers, who want more relevant results and who are more likely to click-through on those changed results, earning you more money. So what do you do?

Simple really, isn’t it?

Sources:
1 – Morgan Stanley Internet Trends
2 – Search Engine Land – Google Mobile Growth
3 – Mashable – Google Mobile Search
4 – Marketing Week – Google Mobile Search
5 – Marketing Pilgrim – Google Mobile Local Spin
6 – ibid.

While every year for the past five has been heralded ‘the year of mobile’, will 2010 take the crown?  I don’t think it’s quite time yet, but it is time we all sat up & took notice of how consumers are using search on mobile phones.

There are two ways to target paid search ads to consumers using mobiles:

1. Users on WAP-enabled mobile phones (eg BlackBerry and the host of internet-enabled standard handsets)

2. Users on smart phones with full internet browsers (eg iPhone)

Given WAPs stabilisation &/or decline I’m going to focus on high-end devices with a full web browser.

Your AdWords campaign automatically opts you in to target mobile devices with full browsers, however there are some key differences in the ads being displayed:

• Mobile device search results show 2 paid ads at the top of the page, followed by approximately 10 organic results & snippets, followed by 2 to 3 paid ads at the bottom.
• If you utilise the full character limit allowed (the same as desktop search), your ad will actually fit over 4 lines rather than 3, hence pushing your competitors further down the page.

Given a rank of 1 – 2 is much more critical on a mobile platform to ensure visibility and share of voice, slightly different optimisation techniques should be applied.  We recommend setting up a unique campaign targeting the mobile platforms, which enables you to employ the most appropriate optimisation strategies, utilise your creative character limits, send consumers to a mobile-device-friendly landing page (WAP or no flash!), and also importantly target your creative message to consumers on the move.

Whilst search volumes on mobile devices are still small (less than 1% of desktop from the data we’ve seen), they are growing.  Google Australia has outlined some impressive growth charts over the recent Christmas period.  Now we can only wait for telco providers to make data plans more accessible, and search will be revolutionised!

Oh, and if you are targeting mobile devices from the one Google AdWords campaign you can now see a breakdown of traffic by device (desktop v. mobile); go to Filters and views > Segment by > Device.

I like to drink coffee and fortunately for me there is no shortage of coffee shops in the area. Infact, there are no less than six coffee shops on the block where the Outrider Sydney office is located.

So to satisfy my curiousity I wanted to compare mobile search results on Google vs Bing when looking for “coffee shop cremorne” on the iPhone. How do the search engine results look and perform on iPhone and if I was searching would I actually find a coffee shop?

Google Search on the iPhone

Google results look familiar to the results that you would get on the web browsing from a laptop. Google’s text is small which allows it to fit more results into the screen. What comprises the organic results are websites, a block for local listings complete with map, clickable phone numbers and opening hours. There are also a few relevant videos and there is a block of paid ads at the very bottom.

Google helps the searcher out with the ‘Google Suggest’ query suggestion product making searches that bit faster.

Overall, Google performs well on the GUI front – its fast, easy to use and does look nice. But, apparently there is only one coffee shop in the entire area and I need to walk about 2 kms down to Spit Junction to get my caffeine fix.

But if I click on the ‘Local’ tab at the top I’m given a bunch of local listings, some of which are really helpful. So right now, the search is only partially helpful.

Bing on the iPhone

Visually, Bing looks a little bit bland and as a default the text size is fairly big – bigger than the results on a normal web browser. Also, for local searches Bing requires you to add your location.

Bing doesn’t have the rich local listings, maps, videos or related search suggestions that Google offer. When you click on a link Bing opens that link up in a new page which might be confusing to some people. You’ll see the ‘local’ tab but its not clickable for my localised search.

Results wise, Bing shows six organic results before I have to click through on the next page of results. Out of six results for “coffee shop cremorne” only one was relevant. The other five results thought I wanted to buy a coffee machine. Also, slight mispellings of suburb name totally throw Bing’s results. My search for a coffee shop would lead me to think that there is next to nowhere in Cremorne to buy a cafe latte!

And the winner is…

Currently, Google’s search results are superior and far ahead of Bing and at least they list one coffee shop in a neighbouring suburb on the main search result page. However, in real world terms, the average searcher would likely abandon both Bing and Google mobile search results and end up walking or driving around until they find what they’re looking for.

The other half of the story are local businesses who really need to get on board and obtain local listings on the search engines…of course, that is if they want to attract new customers.

Google officially announced on their blog on Thursday that they’ve released Google Product Search for mobile. I know personally I would find this very useful, as there have been many times I’ve been in a store pondering a purchase yet hold back until I can get online and read a couple of reviews. Mobile product search capabilities would allow me whip out my iPhone (if I had one!) and read a couple of reviews on the spot, and save me a return visit to the store. The product information comes neatly formatted for phone browsers (as pictured), with easy access to ratings, reviews, price comparisons and more.

Google has stated that those who have already submitted their product listings do not need to do anything to be eligible for displaying on mobile, but it represents a good opportunity to create and optimise your product landing pages for mobile users.

Now this is all well and good for those eCommerce stores in the US that utilise Product Search, but Australian sellers are missing out and have been for too long in my opinion. Google Australia still isn’t showing those shopping results seen in Google.com when a search is made.

On a related note, SEORoundtable have reported a new option within Google Base admin where you can now choose to ‘Share with Adwords’ your product listings. This new feature offers a searcher the option of displaying products from a particular seller showing an ad in the sponsored listings. This represents another engagement opportunity that Australian sellers will be missing out on until such time as a full rollout of Product Search happens here.