No matter how you look at it (or who you ask) mobile search, the model that has effectively retrofitted Internet search for mobile devices, is riddled with shortcomings This was the message that came across in the interviews I conducted for Mobile Advertising Research UK, the presentations I and other search authorities made during the recent Mobile Search Masterclass in London, and, more recently, in the mobile search assessment white paper (Pump Up The Volume: An Assessment of Voice-Enabled Web Search on the iPhone) I co-authored with Peggy Albright. (DOWNLOAD)

Is mobile search broken? More importantly, how can we fix it? These are the questions I put to a variety of executives representing companies from across the mobile search and advertising business ecosystem. Read between the lines, and their answers – along with my own conclusions – point to areas of improvement and opportunity in mobile search.

MOBILE ADVERTISING RESEARCH UK

Primary research and C-Level interviews with agencies, brands, operators and third parties reveal mobile search is missing the mark. Their gripe: the poor quality of mobile search (specifically universal search powered by keyword queries and PageRank algorithms) is to blame for a lack of interest and investment in paid search advertising.

As a leading executive at a global brand put it: “Just between the two of us, our spend for search is by far not in the [single] digits yet – and it won’t be….We do a lot in mobile, but the basics of search are not yet at the level of sophistication consumers would expect from us.”

At the other end of the spectrum, agencies are far from upbeat about the short-term outlook for mobile search. As one managing director at a mobile marketing agency put it: “Just the way the content is indexed prevents advertisers from creating a cohesive plan to integrate search in their [mobile] advertising strategies. There is just not the volume to get in and really do some targeted search [advertising], and that’s what brands want: to make advertising personal and relevant to every search the consumer makes.”

Against this backdrop, many sources questioned whether the U.K. adspend figures for 2008 released by the Internet Advertising Bureau (IAB) – the trade body for digital marketing – and PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) didn’t overplay the importance of paid search advertising.

The study – a U.K. first – shows that mobile adspend bucked all market trends, increasing by 99.2 percent year on year to reach GBP28.6 million. Mobile display advertising – which includes banners, text links, tenancies pre/post roll and in-game – accounted for GBP14.2 million in 2008, 49.8 percent of all mobile advertising spend, while paid-for search advertising was estimated to account for GBP14.4 million, 50.2 percent of all mobile advertising spend.

As Harry Dewhirst, Co-Founder & Operations Director of RingRing Media Ltd., an independent media agency in the U.K., pointed out during the conference Mobile Advertising Research UK and again in a private briefing with MSG: the amount spent on paid search (from his vantage point) is considerably less than display. The reason: mobile search is “not up to scratch” and fails to deliver people “information in a digestible format as quickly and as conveniently as they need it.” (During the conference Harry raised eyebrows when he identified mobile search as a chief obstacle to mobile advertising – period.)

Harry further tells me the poor mobile search experience means fewer people use search, and that has resulted in a “lack of depth” in search terms. While the terms “plumber” and “London” might draw crowds of online searchers, they can’t pack them in on mobile – yet. “And until they do, search queries will continue to be focused on branded terms like ‘Facebook’ and ‘MySpace,’ and used as navigation.” Despite these issues, Harry reports conversion rates for search are higher than display. “This indicates a positive future for mobile search advertising, but the repeat usage and quality of results isn’t good enough yet.” (Ironically, this sentiment is echoed and documented in the summary analysis of the Masterclass below.)

But there are some bright spots. Harry, who knows mobile search inside out from his previous experience at Medio Systems, a mobile search provider, gives high marks to Taptu, a socially-assisted service that tackles issues such as poor quality results and even worse rendering by summarizing the content/search results in a page that allows people to pre-screen the results before clicking. He is also upbeat about other vertical solutions such as directory assistance search services that are designed from the ground up to give searchers what they need on the move.

MOBILE SEARCH MASTERCLASS

A summer highlight for me has been participating for the second successive year in the mobile search masterclass, a course delivered as part of The City University London’s Masterclass series. Once again I joined an impressive roster of industry authorities from companies, and once again Colin Bates, CTO of Mobile Commerce Ltd., presented some amazing insights into mobile search usage, trends and behavior.

It’s worth sitting up to take notice because Mobile Commerce, like an honest broker sitting between all the major U.K. mobile operators and all the mobile search engines, effectively powers customers’ search boxes. In a nutshell, Mobile Commerce takes the search terms people type into operator portal search boxes and federates them out to a variety of information retrieval sources to deliver a results set made up of  regular Internet search results (Google, Yahoo Microsoft), specialist mobile search results (local search and a variety of verticals), and paid search advertising linked to keywords. Mobile Commerce also offers an increasing number of content owners/publishers a similar service through its Monetised Mobile Search solution, a plug-in service that allows client companies to put a search box on their mobile site and generate revenues from paid search advertising.

As a result, Mobile Commerce has an invaluable insider’s view into what people search for and the results they receive. The bottom line: Nearly 12 months on from Colin’s last presentation and mobile search is still (!) broken.

VOLUME

The surprise: mobile search volume has doubled and in some cases tripled. However, part of the reason for this meteoric rise could be Mobile Commerce’s own success in signing up customers (such as major U.K. newspapers and Virgin Media). Colin put it down to growth in mobile publishing and the number of publishers that placed a search box on their pages. [Hmm - will more publishers take charge of content (and advertising) by controlling the search box?] And let’s not forget the impact of the iPhone and other cool handsets that make the Internet fun to surf on our phones.

What are people searching for? The stellar growth Colin sees – partly because Mobile Commerce powers mobile search for The Sun – is in a category he calls “Glamor,” a term that comprises all the hot half-nude models (Page 3 girls) featured on the newspaper’s third page.

More people are using mobile search. Are they getting what the want?

In a word, no.

Colin’s road test of mobile search services offered by Google and Yahoo (similar to last year) makes it clear mobile search has a way to go. While the search engines excel in Internet search on a mobile phone, their mobile-specific results are – well – “rubbish.” A search for directory assistance delivers a link to the media relations department for World Aids Day, and a simple search for nearby post offices delivers a list of locations no longer in operation. As Colin put it: “The tools (such as Google Maps) are great, the data is out of date.”

Why are mobile search results served up by Internet search engines so poor?

1)    Mobile robots can’t spider the “mobile Web.” There is no sure-fire way to identify a site by URL (for a while .mobi or m.sitename. was a help). The advance of the iPhone and multi-mode sites that adapt content and change markup to match the incoming device type also muddy the waters.

2)    Indexing mobile pages – where information is dynamic, spread across multiple pages and impacted by user input and user-generated content – is a nightmare to index.

3)    The existence of data silos (such as downloadable content) and the lack of cross-linking data make it difficult to rank results and power PageRank algorithms.

4)    People have little say in their search results. On the Internet what we click on (or don’t) is important feedback (an indication of what we find relevant) that fine-tunes rankings and results. We do this on mobile too, but relevant results are often too many clicks away to be seen, used or appreciated.

PERSPECTIVES

Despite the many shortcoming of mobile search, people are using it more than ever before.

What are the drivers?

For one, supply. More players offer mobile search this year than last.

All the U.K. operators offer mobile search on their portals and an increasing number of publishers have also implemented Mobile Commerce solutions.

(In fact, this flurry of activity prompted Mobile Commerce to launch its Monetised Search service in the U.S., where U.K.-based search engine Taptu has signed up as the first client. Bob Last, SVP of Business Development at Taptu, said in a statement: “Working closely with Mobile Commerce since last year, Mobile Commerce significantly improves the availability of relevant ads for our users. The U.S. is our busiest market for mobile searches at Taptu and we are very pleased to be extending our involvement with Mobile Commerce to monetise more of this U.S. search traffic.”)

Demand is also a factor.

People are using mobile search – but it’s not the way they use it on the PC. It’s more about snacking, snippets and quick answers than research and information retrieval. This is what Mobile Commerce concludes (and proves) after a thorough analysis of search terms, search results and what people clicked. Because it powers the complete process it can make the connection between what people query and what they consider a valuable (accurate) result.

The company has developed a system of some 20 categories, ranging from Single User Search (which comprises all the Long Tail terms that literally only came up once in 12 months) to Social Networking (which accounted for a 16 percent of searches over the last year).

Connect the dots, as Colin did, and specific categories (such as Social Networking) are about navigation. In other words, people are typing them in order to find the mobile site. This is further supported by the dramatic dip in searches for Facebook plummet right around the time the social network launched a proper mobile property.

REVENUE

Mobile search may broken but paid search advertising – at least for a few categories – is paying dividends. Specifically, the categories Adult, Games and Personalization (downloadable mobile content) received the largest ratio of clicks against paid search adverts in the results set.

Read between the lines, and we have a confirmation of the pivotal role of paid search advertising in content discovery (a trend I have tracked and documented in articles such as this one for New Media Age – subscription  required).

Why should mobile content companies harness paid search ads to promote their content? Because it works. As Colin put it: “The mobile search model is broken, and publishers have very little control over how their sites appear in the results set – if at all.” In practice, using advertising – specifically text and banner ads – enables content discovery and drives results. It’s also cheap discovery since (at least in the U.K.) CTRs for display ads have tumbled from GBP 15 per CPM to “around GBP 5.”

The avalanche of mobile content – and now mobile apps – turns up the pressure on publishers and developers to rise above the noise and make their stuff findable and buyable. Until companies fix the bugs in mobile search, display and banner ads remain the only sure-fire way to get the message out.

BETTER MOBILE SEARCH

But publishers and brands don’t have to limit their focus to the usual suspects (Google, Yahoo, Microsoft). The real excitement is in search tools and technologies that make the most of mobile and even harness other people to improve the overall experience.

An example Colin offered is Shazam, which he described as “mobile content search without the box.” The phenomenally popular mobile music discovery provider grew from 20 million users (in September 2008) to 35 million worldwide (in February 2009), with over a million tracks now being tagged every day across the world. (Release) It has deployed by 75 carriers across 60 countries, and is a popular application in the Apple App Store, the Android Market and the BlackBerry App World.

In Colin’s view, “mobile-specific search tools” that enable made-for-mobile search (as opposed to universal Internet search) are bound to improve mobile search and make money for the companies that develop them.

In my own Masterclass presentation (and ongoing mobile search research) I have taken it a step further, identifying 10+ categories of mobile search and assembling a list of super-cool companies harnessing context, location and the wisdom of crowds to improve the precision of search results and the quality of our mobile search experiences.

A welcome addition to the list is Alabot, a mobile search provider based out of Pune, India, with offices in Kuala Lumpur and London. I first met Akshat Shrivastava, Alabot founder, at a mobile search conference, where I had the pleasure of presenting him with the Bronze in the category Best Technology Innovation – Software. Earlier this week Akshat sent me a DM via Twitter (@peggyanne) with the great news: Alabot has secured funding from a global innovation fund and sealed a deal with a Malaysian mobile operator to develop a multi-lingual (English, Bahasa, Chinese, Tamil) mobile content vertical search service.

The text search service will start off serving up ringtones and wallpapers from the operator’s online content stock, or “low hanging fruit” Akshat tells me is just the beginning. As he put it: “Content services that require a syntax or Internet access aren’t getting traction [in that region] because they are not intuitive or interactive.” Moving forward, Akshat tells me plans are to extend the service to other content verticals and expand reach via deals with several OEMs. Rock On!

SEARCH AS CONVERSATION

Strong demand for more interactive (translated: natural language search services) isn’t limited to emerging markets.

In North America, ChaCha, a people-powered search service that uses specially trained individuals ChaCha calls “guides,” has answered more than 150 million questions via mobile phones and the Internet, making it one of the leaders in SMS search.

Intrigued by the power and potential of voice search on the iconic iPhone, Peggy Albright and I recently completed Pump Up The Volume: An Assessment of Voice-Enabled Web Search on the iPhone, a performance analysis of voice-enabled mobile search services offered by Google, ChaCha and Vlingo (a spoken interface to the Yahoo search engine). Download the free white paper here.

A chief finding: ChaCha “proved superior” to the two other voice-enabled search options for the iPhone. Specifically, ChaCha proved to offer exceptional results, with its human guides interpreting the search query accurately in the majority of cases.

To be clear, the study was not a road test of speech recognition technologies. To evaluate the overall performance of voice-enabled mobile services offered by ChaCha, Google and Vlingo for iPhone with Yahoo!, the researchers asked a series of 18 queries representative of six typical mobile search categories (Navigational, Directions, Information Local, Information General, Social, and Long-Tail). For each query the researchers evaluated nine performance characteristics including response time, results accuracy, voice recognition accuracy, number of results received, keytaps required, relevancy of the result, location awareness, use of advertising, and presence of other value-added features.

According to the study, ChaCha interpreted natural language search queries, that is, queries asked as questions, accurately in 94.4 percent of the tests and delivered an accurate search result in 88.9 percent of cases. The Google voice recognition technology interpreted queries accurately in 16.7 percent of tests and delivered accurate search results in 22.2 percent of tests. The Vlingo for iPhone voice recognition technology correctly interpreted queries in 72.2 percent of cases and delivered accurate results (via Yahoo!) in 27.8 percent of tests.

A clear finding that emerged is the importance of people-power. As Peggy Albright pointed out: “The use of human agents [by ChaCha] to help interpret spoken queries and conduct searches makes a positive difference in the quality of results delivered when compared to traditional search engines that use algorithmic software to find requested documents or information on the basis of keyword matches.”

In the report I also identified a key advantage ChaCha has over its competitors: Its keen focus on social search, an approach that effectively infuses human preferences and human judgments into computer algorithms to pinpoint truly relevant information and potentially better answers.

Beyond tipping the scales back in favor of results that are relevant rather than search- engine optimized, social search also lays the groundwork for a conversation with people on their terms, paving the way for the delivery of mobile advertising that is relevant and more likely to be appreciated.

MY TAKE:

Universal mobile search has significant shortcomings, weaknesses that brands and agencies tell me has convinced them to put paid search on the back burner. (There are exceptions: Colin from Mobile Commerce reminds us that for some segments – specifically mobile content – paid search is a potent means to encourage content discovery.) We have a choice: we can wait for providers to improve universal mobile search, or we can harness tools and technologies to deliver a better experience NOW. An obvious and excellent alternative is social search, often called “people-powered search” because it harnesses people to deliver results tailored to searchers on the basis of who they are and what they like. The interviews and insights collected in this analysis outline where mobile search misses the mark and reveal a huge opportunity for companies (such as ChaCha) that give a personal touch to search results (a perfect fit with the mobile phone, which we’ve already established is an intensely personal device).

It’s still in the early days, but the place and the power of people in mobile search is clear. As the worlds of mobile search and mobile social networking collide, they produce opportunities for companies to tap the community – both implicitly and explicitly – for much better quality results and the delivery of much more relevant advertising.

Disclaimer: The complete report is available for free download from MSearchGroove. This white paper is published by MSearchGroove. It contains the findings of independent research and analysis carried out by Peggy Albright, Albright Communications, and Peggy Anne Salz, MSearchGroove in January 2009. The research methodology was developed by Peggy Albright. The research was sponsored by ChaCha. The opinions expressed in this white paper are those of Peggy Albright and Peggy Anne Salz, and do not reflect the opinions of the organizations referenced in this paper.

Related reading:

Context, Social Media, And Cool Interfaces Rock Mobile Search; MSG Teams Up With mTrends To Map Out The Brave New Landscape

Mobile Search Masterclass: How Google & Yahoo Really Measure Up; Is Paid Search The Path To Discovery?

Mobile Social Search Makes Its Mark; Will Group Searching, Sharing & Collaboration Take Social Networking To The Next Level?

EXCLUSIVE & EXPLOSIVE: New People-Powered Mobile Search & Advertising Solution Puts Mobile Operators Back In The Driver’s Seat; Will Search Giants Have To Watch Their Backs?

Will Tapping The Wisdom Of Crowds Outsmart Mobile Search Giants?

But the real news is Pump Up The Volume: An Assessment of Voice-Enabled Web Search on the iPhone, MSearchGroove’s new-release white paper assessing the performance of voice search on an iPhone offered by ChaCha, Google and Vlingo (using Yahoo!), which you can download here. The report is especially timely, coming on the heels of today’s announcement by Google that it has fine-tuned the mobile app versions of its Google Voice service for Blackberry and Android. (More on the user experience via this detailed post at GigaOm.)

The top-level findings: ChaCha, a fast-growing SMS mobile search service available in the U.S. in the industry, “proved superior” to two other voice-enabled search options for the iPhone: the Google Mobile App with Voice and Vlingo for iPhone, a voice enabled application that allows users to direct their spoken queries to Google or Yahoo! (For the purposes of this study Vlingo provided a spoken interface to the Yahoo! search engine.)

ChaCha proved to offer exceptional results, with its human guides interpreting the search query accurately in the majority of cases. According to the study, ChaCha interpreted natural language search queries, that is, queries asked as questions, accurately in 94.4 percent of the tests and delivered an accurate search result in 88.9 percent of cases. The Google voice recognition technology interpreted queries accurately in 16.7 percent of tests and delivered accurate search results in 22.2 percent of tests. The Vlingo for iPhone voice recognition technology correctly interpreted queries in 72.2 percent of cases and delivered accurate results (via Yahoo!) in 27.8 percent of tests.

My personal thanks to esteemed colleague and associate Peggy Albright, the study’s lead analyst and principal author, and Bill Meisel, editor of Speech Strategy News and a leading authority on market and product opportunities created by the maturing of speech technology. Bill is also the president of president of TMA Associates and I look forward to showcasing his work and ideas on MSG soon.

Tomorrow: More report findings and surprising observations on the dismal state of mobile search.

Disclaimer: The complete report is available for free download here. This white paper is published by MSearchGroove. It contains the findings of independent research and analysis carried out by Peggy Albright, Albright Communications, and Peggy Anne Salz, MSearchGroove in January 2009. The research methodology was developed by Peggy Albright. The research was sponsored by ChaCha. The opinions expressed in this white paper are those of Peggy Albright and Peggy Anne Salz, and do not reflect the opinions of the organizations referenced in this paper.

Regular readers will recall that MSG was commissioned to conduct Mobile Advertising Research UK, a project research endorsed by the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) and the Mobile Marketing Association (MMA), to expertly document the state of the mobile advertising industry in the U.K. and identify growth opportunities in the emerging mobile advertising marketplace.

The report — which combines valuable consumer insights gathered by ÆNEAS Strategy Consulting and Management (coordinated by my esteemed colleagues Tarik Fawzi and Atva van Zanten) and qualitative research based on more than 20 interviews with operators, enablers, agencies and brands contributed by MSG — marks the first in a series of region-specific reports that will include Germany (2009) and North America (2010).

During the inaugural event (Mobile Advertising Research U.K.) last week in London, Tarik and I presented an overview of key findings (documented by MSearchGroove here) and revealed the results of an online survey of over 1,000 British. consumers. Pricing is GBP 2,999 ($4,866) for the report, and a 500 GBP discount is available for MMA/IAB members, and people who attended the event. For more details, click here.

And speaking of reports, I am pleased to announce that I will provide a sneak-peak at the results of a performance analysis of voice-enabled mobile search services from search giants Google, Yahoo! & ChaCha during a special Mobile Search Masterclass in London on June 30.

By way of background, this course is part of The City University London’s Masterclass series, a collaboration between the giCentre and the Centre for Interactive Systems Research at the University. It will be run for the second year following from feedback last year and is endorsed by the Mobile Data Association (MDA). Registration is GBP295 and the organizers tell me there are still a few seats available, so email Mark Firman (mfirman@soi.city.ac.uk) to reserve your place.

The complete findings will be released in July, but I can say that ChaCha, a fast-growing SMS mobile search service available in the U.S., “proved superior” to two other voice-enabled search options for the iPhone: the Google Mobile App with Voice and Vlingo for iPhone, a voice-enabled application that allows users to direct their spoken queries to Google or Yahoo! For the purposes of this study, Vlingo provided a spoken interface to the Yahoo! search engine.

To evaluate the overall performance of voice-enabled mobile services offered by ChaCha, Google and Vlingo for iPhone with Yahoo!, we asked a series of 18 queries representative of six typical mobile search categories (Navigational, Directions, Information Local, Information General, Social, and Long-Tail). For each query, we evaluated nine performance characteristics including response time, results accuracy, voice recognition accuracy, number of results received, keytaps required, relevancy of the result, location awareness, use of advertising and presence of other value-added features. The study further took into account that a service could deliver its search results in the form of answers (as ChaCha offers) or as links to Web pages (which Google and Vlingo deliver); for each query tested, an accurate result could be achieved in either form.

In addition to going over some high-level results, I will also present an overview of the mobile search landscape, focusing particular attention on the 10+ categories of mobile search gaining significant traction, including multimodal (voice/visual), mobile vertical search (music/games) and social search, a people-powered search approach that effectively infuses human preferences and human judgments into computer algorithms to pinpoint relevant information and better answers.

This presentation is based on the work I did with Rudy De Waele, blogger at mTrends and dotopen founder, in preparation for a workshop on Mobile Search Future Prospects organized by JRC IPTS (Institute for Prospective Technological Studies of the European Commission).

Other masterclass speakers and sessions will examine a range of topics and developments, including: mobile search statistics and surveys, key trends and developments, location services and search user interfaces and usability, and the range of content and advertising monetization models involving mobile search. I’m honored to join an impressive roster of industry authorities from companies including AmbieSense Ltd., a provider of ambient search services; Microsoft Research (Cambridge); g8wave Ltd., a mobile marketing company; and Mobile Commerce Ltd., a provider of location-based services that also possesses what the founders call a “piece of enablement” that gives them deep insight into the search queries passed through the operator portals in the U.K., and the results set returned to the user. This central position, combined with the company’s prowess in search advertising, makes MC a top address for the inside track on the quality of the mobile search experience offered by Google and Yahoo!, as well as their ability to deliver relevant results to users’ queries.

Last year, the case studies and analytics provided by Colin Bates, Mobile Commerce CTO, data also reported on MSearchGroove, provided invaluable insight into the most popular categories of mobile search queries and what users really want from their mobile search experience. The eye-opening observation: “Users are grazing, not researching. They are looking for time-fillers rather than facts, and they are using search boxes for site-finding rather than data-finding.”

It will be exciting to explore how mobile search has moved on and discuss where it is going. If you plan to attend and would like to meet up or catch up, please contact me directly (peggy@msearchgroove.com) or arrange an appointment with Andrea Henninge (andrea@msearchgroove.com). I hope to see you soon and will circle back with analysis after the event.

The recent report on trends in location-aware apps from Apple’s App Store, Google’s Android Marketplace, and Blackberry’s App World released by Skyhook Wireless, itself a provider of a patented hybrid system of location awareness, reveals a buoyant market for LBS apps. Indeed, the Apple App Store was found to have the greatest number of location-based applications, at over 2,300, and the highest percentage of paid for location apps, at over 75 percent. 67 percent of Blackberry apps are paid, and 80 percent of Android Marketplace apps are free.

Clearly, location apps are popular, as their increasing ubiquity and popularity across a variety of app stores demonstrates. But move past the hype and the excitement generated by the flurry of activity in the space, and it becomes clear that location services – by themselves – are not game-changing.

Location-aware data is not enough

Indeed, mobile location-based services and social networking companies such as Loopt, Pelago, and Sense Networks have invested a great deal to achieve their vision, which revolves around the provision of an array of consumer and community services supported by socially-tagged, location-aware data stores. The data they have is impressive and the expansion plans they pursue are ambitious. However, they also face formidable competition from Internet giants (Google, MySpace, Facebook, and Yelp) that have already aggregated their own large sets of useful social content, and are anxious to extend their reach to mobile.

Can companies compete on location data? Many players are positioning themselves to do just this. However, I submit that location services – and the structures and systems in place to deliver them – represent little more than an incremental innovation on top of the immense stockpiles of location data and content that are largely under the control of established Web companies and heavyweights. As a result, these Web giants are well-positioned to leverage location data to mobilize their offers and ultimately dominate the marketplace. There are, however, options and strategies mobile location services companies can employ to win the game – even though, as I argue in this is column, location services on their own are far from game-changing.

Admittedly, not everyone shares my view. Sam Altman, founder of Loopt, told me in a recent interview that he strongly believes in the value of innovation in location-based services and their central position in personal mobility experiences. A prime example is the company’s iPhone app. Loopt’s Mix feature enables users -without compromising their personal privacy – to connect with other users nearby. What’s more, users can find places nearby on Yelp and find what their friends on Loopt are saying about those places.

Beyond this interesting user experience, Loopt’s location-related content is thin, and therefore isn’t terribly useful – yet. However, it’s not so much the company’s progress with their service offering that interests me as much as its business priorities.

Specifically, Loopt has correctly honed in on two features/functionalities which are fundamental to all location-based services moving forward.

1. Connecting users to each other (using location in addition to other social filtering parameters).
2. Connecting users to information (using location as an additional input to search).

The intersection between location and search on a mobile is particularly promising, and has caught the attention of location services providers including Loopt, Sense Networks (CitySense), and Pelago (Where service), as well as mobile search services providers including ChaCha, a company that connects users to a human agents trained to provide answers to their SMS text search queries and, more recently, voice-activated queries.

However, these players are all pursuing business models built around a broad but rather general vision of what location-based services are – and can be.

In their view, location can be to mobile search and social networking what PageRank currently is to Internet search. Put in this perspective, location is potentially disruptive. What’s more, the companies that control the data stores (thus the capabilities to connect users to information they require, and to each other) are positioned to rock the industry.

Location information is power, both to the companies that deliver it and the consumers, who benefit from the tremendous amount of utility it provides.

Love the restaurant where you just ate? Review it, post it online, and alert everyone (or just your friends) nearby to try the place, all while you’re waiting for the check. Want to find a good barber shop in Mountain View, California? Ask a question, direct it only to users in downtown Mountain View, and be alerted when you receive an answer from someone there. The immediacy, intimacy, relevance, and quality of such services make them very exciting for consumers.

And let’s not forget the potential for the delivery of more relevant, location-aware mobile advertising, which is the main attraction for local stores, clubs, restaurants, businesses, and organizations hoping to attract consumers to their premises.

The location tools and technologies used here to record what we do and where we are (all the while paying careful attention to personal privacy concerns) as part of our day-to-day routine provide advertisers, agencies, and mobile operators a potentially much deeper understanding of consumer habits, insights that can greatly increase the value of mobile advertising linked to location-based services. Mobile contextual advertising is already de rigueur, but location has the potential to make mobile advertising more relevant, more personalized, and thus much more effective.

But it doesn’t stop there. Adding location on top of traditional information sources we know from the Internet provides online companies with further opportunity to personalize content for their users on the move. Location can also boost the quality and value of online recommendations (where the system delivers suggestions based on an implicit understanding of user content preferences and requirements) and search (where an explicit query triggers the delivery of additional related results).

Why location-based services are an incremental innovation

Clearly, location services which connect users to each other, or information, or both have the best chances for success. However, there are several major obstacles that make this a difficult space for companies – particularly startups – to gain traction.

1. Users can resist change: Connecting users to each other and introducing them to new social networking communities could be tough, particularly if they are loyal to the communities where they are already members. The social networking space is already nearing saturation point, at least in the U.S. and the U.K.
2. User-generated content matters: Without a large data store of geotagged content, there is little value to a location-based service. Yelp and CitySearch, companies that have large data stores of reviews, listings, phone numbers, and shop information indexed by location, have the advantage here.
3. Search needs location: Developing effective mobile search will likely require heavy-duty algorithms and design (that factor location and context into the equation), and a large infrastructure to deliver.
4. Google is on an expansion course: Companies – particularly startups – face strong competition from Google. Latitude, a service that allows users to share their location with their friends on GTalk, can be read as Google’s bid for market supremacy. Is Google over-reaching? Not if we consider the company’s ability, through Latitude, to leverage legions of clusters for search to deliver more relevant information culled from a wider data set than any startup could ever stockpile. Furthermore, Google’s dominance in contextual advertising, which it is trying to extend to the mobile space, allows it to reach out to a wide network of advertisers and businesses eager to attract traffic to their sites and tap in to the potentially lucrative Long Tail of search queries. While even Google will have difficulties as it sharpens its focus on selling paid search advertising to the hyperlocal market, its brand recognition and reach may allow it to make considerable inroads and thus pose a significant threat to a broad mix of location services providers and mobile ad networks.
5. Brands need trust: Users are generally not accustomed to sharing their location data with brands and merchants. To convince consumers they trust brands with their personal information, all communications (particularly brand messages delivered via mobile marketing campaigns) will need to be permission-based and comply with the Global Code of Conduct, guidelines introduced by the Mobile Marketing Association (MMA), a global non-profit trade organization established to lead the growth of mobile marketing and its associated technologies. Put another way, brands best positioned to achieve their business objectives, and reach mainstream users instead of just early adopters, are ones that respect our privacy and have our respect. That narrows the candidates down to established big-name brands, companies that we know and trust.
6. Content without consent is spam: The avalanche of new content linked to contextual data (what we do and where) opens the door wide open to the delivery of spam and the spread of fraud. All companies have to do their utmost to attack this problem at the root. However, many startups will likely find they lack the infrastructure to keep this issue in check.

Put another way, making a mark in the location services space requires more than the ability to pick up on a user’s location. Location services require the professional and reliable interplay of systems and services enabling search, content delivery and discovery, social networking and communication, and mobile marketing and advertising. What’s more, players in this space must connect and collaborate with a complex value chain that includes advertisers, enablers, operators, consumers, and companies we have yet to identify.

Given these factors, the players that emerge dominant in this market are likely to be the names we know from the Internet: Facebook, MySpace, Google, and Yelp. Why? Because, as I have pointed out: It’s not about location; it’s about the data and the networks that power location services. Internet giants have experience, communities, content, and search. Location is just another ingredient they can add to their already successful recipe for success. Put simply, location serves as an additional input, paving the way for these companies to provide interesting new applications – applications that fundamentally leverage the assets already out there on the Web.

Smart strategies for clever newcomers

It may be a bleak picture that I paint for mobile location companies and startups; I would like to point out that I am a believer in the vision behind location based services. However, given my experience and common sense, I cannot ignore the barriers that prevent newcomers from changing the game.

But there are actions startups can take to ensure they nonetheless secure a central spot in the merging location services value chain. It may require a rethink, but the potential rewards make it well worth the effort.

I would therefore suggest startups refocus their strategy to bring more value to users, boost their competitiveness in the process. I would advise executing one of the following options:

1. Mashup: tackle the “cold start” problem and build up your data store (and follow the lead of services such as Loopt and Where) by providing content from larger Web services such as Yelp, Evite, Eventbrite, and CitySearch. It’s a great way to connect your users to valuable information immediately. What’s more, there’s an opportunity for one or two location-based “data aggregators” – companies that use information from other services and present it via a unified interface on the mobile device. (However, there is only room for a few companies in this space since the barriers to entry are low and little prevents Internet giants from entering the mobile space (on their own) themselves. Yelp and Google lead the group of Internet companies staking out their mobile territory by releasing location-aware apps for the iPhone and Android devices. A successful play in this niche would therefore require companies to outmaneuver both the mashups offered by other competitors aiming to be data aggregators and the individual siloed applications offered by the Internet companies that have the data and determination to play in mobile.
2. Killer search: It may seem unlikely, but search can be decisive and disruptive, particularly as the integration of location information will likely cause a seismic shift in how users interact with the results they receive on their mobile phone. Keep in mind that, when Google began promoting their brand of search engine, observers joked that the race had already been run and won by the likes of Lycos, HotBot, Yahoo, and AltaVista. My message: If a company makes a fundamental improvement in search by using location data, it would represent a sea-change in contextual search and shift the balance of power away from the current market leaders.
3. Big money: Location can enhance the value and effectiveness of advertising and marketing, adding a new dimension to how companies communicate their brand message to consumers. It may even be possible to use location information to provide better advertising that will appeal to users. As this recent post on MSearchGroove points out: Advertising is indeed content. Location can enable the delivery of truly compelling content. At the other end of the spectrum, we might ask ourselves if it is not possible that location could even pave the way for a whole new paradigm around the effective monetization of content and services that does not involve ad-funding. The value of receiving the right information at the right time and in the right context may be so valuable that people will pay for it.

In conclusion, a bright future awaits location services startups that think outside the box. Granted, it’s a tough market with ever tougher competition, but a strategy built on one (or all) of the options I present will help startups stand up to the Internet giants. I strongly believe location and location-based services are the future. I enjoy hearing about scrappy, ambitious startups, and their success should encourage all companies in this space to execute on the strategies I have outlined. The strategies may vary but the pay-off is clear: Companies that position themselves now to leverage the power of location will lead the way in delivering contextual relevance across mobile search, mobile advertising, and a potentially lucrative range of mobile services we cannot even imagine.

About the author:

Web: http://www.linkedin.com/in/njanewit
Nate Janewit is a search and mobile technologist and a Silicon Valley resident. His career thus far has spanned Microsoft, Google, Kosmix, Efficient Frontier, and research in Japan and at Stanford. He is an analyst of emerging technology and media and actively contributes to developments in the search and search advertising space.

While Yahoo comes to the party more or less six months later than rivals such as Google, there is some indication that the wait was worth it if we consider that this service extends beyond allowing people to conduct keyword searches (for flight numbers, locations, Web site names, local restaurants – the works). People using the app can also use voice to customize the ‘My Interests’ tab. The procedure (according to the press release): “Simply click on ‘add anything’, speak the topic you’re interested in, then select the relevant content and add it to your page.” The Yahoo! oneSearch with voice application is currently available on more than 80 different devices and across platforms including Blackberry, Nokia, Windows Mobile, and now the iPhone – with support in eight languages.

Various bloggers have tried out the voice app, which harnesses speech recognition technology from Vlingo, and reported mixed results. But it’s difficult to judge the user experience based on random road tests. (This is why MSG has pooled its resources to produce mobile search research that, like my own mobile advertising white papers, offers readers a balanced assessment based on first-hand experience and solid methodology.)

The Yahoo app, however, comes in too late to be included in Pump Up The Volume, MSG’s own assessment of Web search on the iPhone. But that won’t keep us from conducting our own road test of the Yahoo app soon. Regular readers and Twitter followers (@peggyanne) may recall I announced the project a while back (a teaser before we had further refined our methodology to account for fundamental differences between natural language and keyword search, an important improvement that makes the results all the more compelling).

The white paper, researched and written in collaboration with Peggy Albright, MSG Associate and founder of Albright Communications, will be released next week. By way of background, our work assesses the overall performance of the voice-enabled search services offered by ChaCha, Google, and Vlingo in a typical range of use cases and scenarios. (Vlingo for iPhone converts queries into text and submits them to one of two search engines, Google and Yahoo. We chose Yahoo.)

A special highlight: A foreword by Bill Meisel, Editor of the specialist publication and voice technology knowledge destination Speech Strategy News. I’m honored to have him on board for the voice search white paper, and look forward to showcasing his analysis/columns on MSG soon.

I won’t divulge all the white paper results and stats here. However, I can say that ChaCha’s  results proved superior to both the Google Mobile App’s voice feature and Vlingo for iPhone.

ChaCha uses human agents to transcribe and interpret/answer search queries (spoken as questions). However, we found the performance of voice recognition alone does not determine nor predict the accuracy of a search result. Indeed, one search provider exhibited high voice recognition accuracy but still had difficulty delivering the intended search results regardless of query format.

Some background on the methodology of this defining work, which will be available for free download.  We created 18 queries representative of mobile search usage and trends. The queries covered search categories considered common in the mobile environment, such as navigation (to a specific Web site), directions, local information, general information on timely topics, and specialized or unusual long-tail topics (sometimes referred to as “dinner table” questions). We also included specific queries that represent the most popular mobile search terms in 2008, based on mobile search data publicly reported by AOL and Yahoo. Recognizing that the search engines used in the Google Mobile App and Vlingo for iPhone services are built from the ground up to handle keyword search – matching documents/information on the basis that they contain one or more terms (keywords) – we conducted a second set of tests using keyword queries.

Peggy and I are proud of the research and look forward to collaborating together on future mobile search assessment reports and work contracted by our various clients. I will keep you posted of our progress on MSG.

A key takeaway I want to leave you with: This white paper provides evidence that mobile social search – which harnesses human judgment, thus restoring balance in a model that tends to promote search engine optimized websites over destinations the user may find genuinely relevant and useful – has significant advantages over algorithmic computer-centric search approaches. As I have pointed out in this earlier analysis, in the case of the mobile phone, an intensely personal device we have with us at all times, a more people-centered approach represents a perfect fit with our search behavior and our expectations for a more personalized service. Indeed, the rise of mobile social networks further underlines our increasing requirement for search services that effectively inject human preferences into the equation. This, itsmy.com CEO Vince Staybl, recently told me was the primary motivation for the tie-up between his mobile social networking service with socially-assisted search engine Taptu, and I fully expect many more such partnerships to follow.

Disclaimer: ChaCha is an MSG supporter and white paper sponsor. The opinions expressed in the white paper are those of Peggy Albright and Peggy Anne Salz, and do not reflect the opinions of organizations referenced in the paper.

Since teaming up with Rudy De Waele, blogger at mTrends and  dotopen founder, to develop mobile search case studies in preparation for a workshop on Mobile Search Future Prospects organized by JRC IPTS (Institute for Prospective Technological Studies of the European Commission), and seeing the positive response to our work to date, I’m convinced mobile search is back again at the top of the industry agenda. And with good reason: Search is the de facto interface to all things digital in the online space, and there is every indication that it will be the same in mobile.

From mobile advertising, where our queries trigger the delivery of related advertising (in the best case scenario, we’re not there yet), to social media, where the content we appreciate and discuss across destinations ranging from MySpace to Twitter allows us to restore balance in an otherwise purely algorithmic approach that tends to promote search engine optimized websites over what we find genuinely relevant and useful, mobile search is where the action is.

But as Rudy and I have both pointed out in our recent presentations, mobile search is not about the usual suspects (Google, Yahoo, and Microsoft). Rudy spoke at Next09, and you can find his slides  further on in this post; I spoke at the European Mobile Media Conference, and my deck can likewise be found after the jump.

Indeed, context and personalization change all the rules (!)

A highlight of our recent presentations: A comprehensive overview of the market and (thanks to Rudy) a SWOT analysis of the players that stand out in their category such as Google (universal search with a poor mobile offer and an even weaker grasp of social search), and Twitter (a case of mobile search + social media = real-time results that really reflect what we discuss/share).

In my own mobile search research – an on-going project that began back in 2004/2005 when I wrote the first report on mobile search and content discovery, a 220+ page report published by Informa Telecoms & Media – I have recently identified some 60+ companies and 10+ categories of mobile search I would like to share with you (below) for your feedback.

INTERACE

• Text: ChaCha, 4INFO,MINFO, textperts (acquired by 118118), Answers.com, AnyQuestionAnswered, Ask, AskMeNow
• Voice: Google, Yahoo, Vlingo, Microsoft, ChaCha (Watch this space for an expert assessment of the voice-enabled services offered by Google, Vlingo, and ChaCha. ( I am proud to have had the opportunity to collaborate with Peggy Albright, MSG Associate and founder of Albright Communications, and even prouder of the results.)
• Visual: IQ Engines, Kooaba, Mobile Acuity, Searchme, SnapNow, SnapTell, Tin Eye Mobile, Nokia
• Navigational: Boopsie, kannuu, Nuance (through Tegic acquisition)

ACTIONABLE

• Universal: Google, Yahoo, Microsoft, AOL (based on Google), Medio Systems, JumpTap (although a much stronger focus on mobile advertising)
• Federated: MCN, Motricity (managed mobile search platform providers)
• Operator-centric search: Amdocs, Qualcomm, IBM and this company coming out of stealth mode
• Alternative search: Defined as every service except for Google, and includes a long tail of 1500+ search engines (tracked by AltSearchEngines) with ambitions to go mobile – some sooner than later
• Vertical/content-specific search: abphone, vtap, Truveo
• Local search: Hundreds of players that offer local search via SMS services, on their own WAP sites, and/or as part of a nearby shopping scheme. (Fortunately, the local mobile search landscape is the topic of an upcoming column on MSG from Martin Wilson, founder of Indigo 102, an independent consultancy with a focus on mobile local search and services, so watch this space!)

SOCIAL

• abphone, ChaCha, Hiogi, Taptu
• Twitter in a class by itself!

It’s work in progress, but it’s all the more exciting if we remember that – in mobile search – the players that matter and the business models that deliver are wide open to discussion.

Indeed, the central role of mobile search in a wide variety of mobile services around sharing, advertising, location, and context-aware activities turns up the pressure on an even broader range of businesses (operators, brands, agencies, enablers – everyone!) to understand what mobile search delivers (and doesn’t) and the companies/models that do it best.

To help mobile professionals and practitioners navigate this tough terrain, Rudy and I have joined together on a project to produce the definitive mobile search market overview, a work that will draw from primary research, case studies, and exclusive forecasts to document this exciting space and present our recommendations for strategies to harness growth opportunities on the horizon.

I still have the opportunity to take your views and perspectives into account, and I would welcome your input. The project, widely distributed via our sites and via our network of sites, supporters, and influencers, will also offer a commercial opportunity to companies interested in conveying their value proposition to a growing community of senior executives and decision-makers in the mobile space.

If you are a mobile search company with an interest in being considered for an interview, please contact me directly or send an email to my assistant Andrea Henninge (andrea@msearchgroove.com).

In fact, this new breed of services, which combines mobile social networking fun and community with the utility of mobile search, potentially creates new forms of interaction and new opportunities for the delivery of relevant mobile advertising. Granted we aren’t there yet, but there are some signposts that I believe mark the way. One start-up that that stands out is HeyStaks (www.heystaks.com).

The company, based in University College Dublin, Ireland, was founded by Dr. Maurice Coyle and Dr. Peter Briggs, and is a spin-out from the research group of Prof. Barry Smyth, who is perhaps best known as co-founder and Chief Scientist of ChangingWorlds (now a Unit of Amdocs Interactive), a company that has pioneered personalization technology. I recently caught up with Barry for a guided tour of the service and an update on the company’s mobile ambitions.

I am also proud that Barry recently partnered with me to publish a series of thought leadership columns exclusively on MSG. Understandably, Barry took a break from the series (which kicked off with this exploration of the “hidden interaction costs” associated with surfing and exploring the mobile Internet) to develop his path-breaking HeyStaks service – now in Beta. But he’ll be back soon with a typically cool column focused on the intelligent delivery of personalized content and advertising, so watch this space!

What is the problem?

As the company cleverly points out in the cartoon strip below, we waste a lot of time searching for things our peers are also searching for (or may already have found!). To make matters worse, we have a lot of trouble sharing what we find with people once we find it. A solution is to make search a social activity (and that goes double for mobile search, in my view) and provide people the tools to create and communicate the searches that matter to them most.

What is HeyStaks?

HeyStaks is a search utility (a browser toolbar for both Firefox and Internet Explorer browsers) that adds collaboration features and a host of social networking functions to your favorite search engine. (It currently works with Google, but Barry tells me that Yahoo and others are in the pipeline.) The beta service is squarely focused on enhancing Web search, but an iPhone app is also on the roadmap.

In a nutshell, HeyStaks allows people to collaborate while they search. With the toolbar, people can create and share what the company calls search staks, which act as repositories for search experiences. HeyStaks also improves the results list because it promotes the results that have proved to be relevant to friends/peers during similar or related searches. (More further down in the Q&A.) As Barry put it: “A search stak is like a folder of your search experiences. You can create as many search staks as you like to cover your different interests and activities.”

To show rather than tell, Barry, a long-time MSG reader and supporter, has created a search stak around MSG content. In addition to keeping all the searches together in one place, HeyStaks also “reminds” us of searches we have found interesting in the past (and previously forgot to bookmark) by highlighting them within the search results delivered and listed by Google. HeyStaks can also make recommendations by inserting other results that Google may have missed or simply buried too deep in the list of blue links for us to find. (Thanks for using MSG Barry! You’ve given me a great idea. The sceenshots below illustrate this new stak. The next step is to make the MSG stak public and so create an MSG search community where readers can join, add their recent related searches, or simply keep up to date with the search activities of the wider community. After all, knowledge is most powerful/valuable when it is shared.)

***

Q: Creating and organizing the searches in HeyStaks is pretty straightforward. How do people share them?

A: Let’s take the example of you planning for a vacation. You create a search stak, call it “Vacation,” and store all your searches there. Suppose the vacation you’re planning will involve family and friends. You can share your Vacation stak with them, so that they can benefit from what you have found as they search, and vice versa. You can do this directly from the HeyStaks toolbar by selecting “Share active stak” in the staks menu. You then enter their email address and each person you invite will receive an email invitation that, if they accept, will add your stak to their own list of search staks in their toolbar. Sharing search staks in this way means that the search knowledge can rapidly grow because relevant searches from your friends and family are added to the Vacation search stak.

Q: HeyStaks can also highlight results in the search results from, say, Google and promote these to the top of the ranking. How is this possible?

A: We have a couple of ways to help people get more out of search. Once you share a stak you have essentially created a search activity feed that will provide you with a live update of searches carried out related to the stak – or staks – you have chosen to share.

At a deeper level, HeyStaks is looking at the various searches that different members of your staks are performing. It’s looking for patterns in those searches, and it’s looking for results that are related to those patterns.  So, you’re not just reminded of results that were clicked for the exact same query by other members of the stack. HeyStaks goes one further and actually figures out that certain results may be relevant to similar queries that haven’t been used before.  So, it’s a way of helping people to understand the sort of things that you’re finding interesting in a particular context, and making sure that everyone else who is sharing in that context is getting the benefit of your finds and you’re getting the benefit of theirs. Put another way, the stak is gradually learning more and more about your interests and is able to better predict those interests and better highlight the results from Google that are likely to serve those interests.

Returning to the Vacation stak example, the  screenshot below shows a typical search using Google and how HeyStaks has highlighted two particular results and promoted these to the top of the ranking. These results were previously selected by other members of the stak for similar queries. HeyStaks has picked up on these being results that others in the community have found interesting and therefore promoted these at the right time and within the right context.

Q: How else can I promote results in what Google delivers to me and others in my search community?

A: Using the toolbar’s tagging function, users can manually add any Web page to a stak. This makes it easy for users to add important pages that would not normally appear in Google’s results, for example. So, going back to the Vacation example, let’s say you find an offer at a hotel after clicking down deeper into the site. Finding this result again is going to require some extra effort, and the others in your community are sure to miss it. How do you make sure the result you found will catch their attention? HeyStaks solved the problem by letting you tag the page from the toolbar, using a tag you choose. You add it to the Vacation stak and – when you search using similar queries in the future or your fiends and family search – HeyStaks will promote this previously hidden result for all the stak members in the search community to see. This tagging feature is a practical way for HeyStaks to mine the deep Web that is all too often invisible to major search engines such as Google and Yahoo.

Q: What are the opportunities and use cases highest on your radar?

A: There’s a very important enterprise search opportunity here, particularly when we look at those enterprise 2.0 tools that promote collaboration within the enterprise as a side effect of capturing certain important pieces of knowledge. Some studies estimate as much as 10 percent of salary costs are effectively wasted because people aren’t able to find what they’re looking for easily. So, there’s lost productivity there and a huge opportunity for HeyStaks.

Using HeyStaks in the enterprise would allow an organization to capture all of that latent search knowledge that is lost as people perform the searches. HeyStaks allows searchers to share that knowledge, so that novice searchers in the organization can benefit from the expertise of more practiced searchers. It’s a way for organizations to start to parcel up the various different types of search knowledge that they have. You could also imagine that, as a new project starts in an organization, it’s just a matter of creating a new search stak to capture the relevant information that is found during the course of that project.

Q: Search results become content. Do you see opportunities in publishing and social media?

A: Yes, there are also huge opportunities in what I’ll call the consumer space. Individuals can create a small number of staks and share them with a small number of friends. You can even envisage larger staks being created by special interest websites or media portals, for example. They could create a stak, populate it with relevant search results, and share that stak with their subscribers, readers, or website visitors.

In the context of MSearchGroove, for example, you can create an MSearchGroove stak, feed that stak with relevant information, and share it with your readers. This way, any time they perform a search which happened to be relevant to MSearchGroove, MSearchGroove results would be promoted within the result list that comes back from Google. So, it’s a way of helping your subscribers get a more personalized version of the Google results list that takes account of the sort of interests they have as subscribers to your site.

CREATE MSearchGroove stak

TAG cool content

PROMOTE pages in Google results for everyone to share

Q: You are focused on your Beta, but iPhone is also in the pipeline. Describe the fit with mobile and how it might intersect with social networking.

A: HeyStaks has created a whole social networking site based around your search activities and if you go onto HeyStaks.com, you will see the social networking that is built around people’s search patterns.  Just like Facebook provides you with social networking services around your friends and your interests and what you do on a daily basis, HeyStaks.com provides you with social networking around your search interests, what you’ve been searching for, the various stacks that you have created, the people that you’ve shared stacks with, and what they have been searching for.

That sort of information can be readily made available as part of a mobile interface so that people can have access to their search communities on the go and they can keep up to date with what other people [in their community or organization] have been finding, for example, especially in projects that are related to their work interests.

Q: What are the business models that would make this possible?

A: I think what’s appealing is the sort of software as a service model. We would envisage keeping the basic service free of charge for all to use. However, for certain types of users who wanted to take advantage of more sophisticated services, if they wanted to create a very large stack and potentially share it with thousands of users; there might be a subscription-based charge.  Ad-funded is another potential source of revenue.

My take: There is plenty of room for innovation in the search space. HeyStaks provides us a glimpse of the future of social search and an important confirmation of the increasing importance of people in the equation. HeyStaks isn’t mobile yet, but when it is it could be game-changing. (Indeed, social search, sharing and community go hand in hand. Taptu, a socially-assisted search service “gets” this – which is why it has recently introduced features and functionality that allow people to share their search results.) Although HeyStaks is aimed at turning our simple search queries into serious content, I also see opportunities for brands to enhance (rather than interrupt) the information flow. In this scenario, search queries and results, created and maintained by tight-knit social networks passionate about their quests, could provide a starting point for brands to get actively involved in the exchange, and even lend a hand in the search by suggesting related answers/products/services members are likely to appreciate. But why stop there? Brands could also post search staks around topics where we need and appreciate some solid advice (such as recipes for food manufacturers, how-to tips for repairs around the house, or remedies for colds/flu or whatever ails us). What a great way to add value for a change!

I have had this trend high on my radar for several years, a passion that received its first outlet and accolades when EContent magazine gave me free reign to write an in-depth cover story on the state of Social Search (which appeared in the November 2007 issue). I loved researching and writing the article, a work I still regard as one of the best in my career. The good news: I’m told the article had – and continues to have – an impact on the content industry. The not-so-good news: When I wrote the article I was disappointed that so few companies “got” mobile, and today – nearly two years later – only a handful of companies have really have caught on.

To be fair, I wrote the article, aptly titled Teams Work: Social Search Gets Results, before companies such as abphone, ChaCha, Hiogi and Taptu broke on to the scene with strategies that draw on social search approaches and algorithms to improve mobile search results ranking and relevancy. I invite you to read my comments in new-release white papers from abphone and Taptu, and MSG’s own soon-to-be released assessment of the user experience delivered by search engines (among them ChaCha).

But progress is progress, and I am confident that more online social search companies will sharpen their focus on mobile as the advance of mobile social networks and other communities pushes people-powered mobile search to the top of the agenda this year. (In fact, recent reports/stats on Twitter, Facebook, and my own discussions with social networking companies confirm an exciting new trend: We have begun to search in communities – and today the number of queries even exceeds our searches in Google. Connect the dots and a game-changing search paradigm emerges. The power of people + the power of mobile = a power shift in favor of new mobile players who harness the wisdom of mobile crowds.

Where does all this leave mobile operators?

Well, just a week ago I would have said they can watch if they are stupid, and open up their analytics to third-parties (to give critical context to search results) if they are smart. Now, I can say they have a third and far more lucrative option: They can offer a people-powered search service provided by an infrastructure vendor (building on existing front-end analytics capabilities that capture the interests, passions, and profiles of users) to deliver subscribers genuinely useful and relevant search results. And if mobile operators chose to bolt on the mobile advertising module, they can position themselves to offer paid search advertising from a variety of ad networks and keep the lion’s share of the revenues.

You’re reading it in MSG first: Watch for a mobile infrastructure provider to launch a solution that joins existing analytics at the front-end with search and advertising, potentially allowing operators to be equivalent to Google. And watch a mobile operator customer to implement it this year.

I am under NDA and therefore cannot disclose the name of the vendor company, but I can share the details of the search technology and the recent results of a trial test the vendor company conducted with a mobile carrier (a pilot that effectively proves the business case for mobile search powered by mobile searchers (subscribers) and enhanced by operator analytics).

Let’s examine the business case for operator-managed mobile search and advertising.

First, mobile search is not rocket science, nor is it a service that only search engine providers can offer. Search can be broken down into two basic tasks: Indexing the Web to include domains and fresh content in search results; and developing algorithms to assist in ranking and rating the results. It’s not impossible and white-label search providers have shown how this can be accomplished. (They just lost the plot when it came to finding and indexing the content on the wider Web, which is why white-label has lost momentum.) However, for reasons I outline below, mobile operators are positioned to go one better than the solutions that have gone before.

Second, PageRank is not the only game in town. There are many techniques available, not just PageRank, a one-size-fits-all approach pioneered by Google (that as I point out in my post suffers from serious limitations in the mobile space). Operators, because they are close to the customer, can harness social search concepts to improve the experience and the search results. (One to consider is BrowseRank, a new algorithm developed by the vendor company that represents a vast improvement on PageRank because it focuses on the pages people click most often, and correctly assumes that we click these pages because they offer the content and answers we value most.

Third, mobile operators alone have access to the data that matters - directly from us. They know our location and context; our profiles and purchases; the sites we browse; and the search results we think rock (!). As a result, mobile operators don’t have to index the whole of the Web because they know from their usage logs the sites we browse and click (not as individuals, but as a group), and can simply make sure these domains figure prominently in the mobile search results.

Finally, we don’t need the whole of the Internet on our phones. If people really do want/demand the whole Web on their phones, then it makes sense to leave mobile search to the search giants who can handle the mammoth task of organizing the world’s information. But do we want it ALL? Not if we consider a recent trial involving the vendor company and a North American carrier. As the source put it: A review of a month of mobile search usage and queries revealed that “millions of users had only visited 34,000 domains.” Drilling down, the source found that a whopping “96 percent of transactions were covered by 14,000 domains.”

Hmmm… So, is there really a Long Tail in mobile search? Or have bad experiences – poor content adaptation, broken links, and other shortcomings – already dampened our enthusiasm for the mobile Web? Or are we just gravitating to our favorite destinations (such as social networks) on the move, and leaving the Long Tail searches to our PCs where we have access to a large screen and a full keyboard? So many questions we can and must address…

I pose a devil’s advocate question: But what if users are flocking to a cool new site, not already in the index? The answer: “A single page request can flag a new site to be included in the search index, giving unprecedented speed of index updating.”

But doesn’t that somehow at some level limit choice? Not really. To introduce an element of serendipity, the solution comes configured with a “throw external” feature that will redirect to GYM search engines if the results delivered by the operator search engine are below a given accuracy. (Settings for SafeSearch also allow the mobile operator to exclude harmful content from the search results.)

The source and I then debated the extent to which analytics and behavioral data could actually enable the creation of new and more personalized mobile search services. Our conclusion: It certainly covers all the bases to achieve this because it would only index the sites the subscribers like best. Take a mobile operator with a prosumer customer base such as O2. They would likely value straightforward results that help them plan and execute their daily routine, and the mobile search results would reflect this. A consumer-focused operator, such as Virgin Mobile, may find that its users prefer entertainment sites and social networking/moblogging destinations, and likewise give them top-notch placement in the mobile search results.

Beyond identifying sites to index tailored to the preferences of the subscriber base, the solution would pave the way for mobile operators to refine search results based on meta data from browsing activity. For the first time ever, mobile search results could be ranked by device type, time of day, or day of the week. As the source put it: “Initially we have  focused  on domain and page popularity within a given data set, however this can be further optimized, for example by refining result ranking based on  time of day or device – people  browsing in  the morning preferred a particular destination domain, while people with a Nokia N95 preferred another.”

Likewise, the solution would allow mobile advertising (which the industry is finally beginning to recognize is another form of content) to be refined and targeted to the preferences and profiles of the subscriber base. What’s more, the mobile operators could keep the lion’s share of the paid search revenues.

My Take: Operators – through their enviable position at the center of our mobile experiences – are perfectly positioned to tap into the wisdom of invisible crowds (us). With the right tools and technology mobile operators can follow our virtual breadcrumb trail to optimize our mobile search (and advertising) experiences, using our actual usage patterns to give us the answers/results we will most likely appreciate. What better way to compete against search engine giants and even win?

While a new report from Bernstein Research may argue that (at least in the US) Google wins the mobile search battle hands-down on the strength of its brand, I believe that other factors (specifically, the quality of the user experience and the tie-up between mobile search and mobile social networking), will pave the way for other companies (and business models). BTW: I am scheduled for a podcast interview this week with Jeffrey Lindsay, Senior Analyst, Bernstein Research, to discuss the key findings of his milestone report, Google, IAC, Yahoo!: Mobile Internet – the Next Advertising marathon – Google and Yahoo! Moving to Front of Pack. In the meantime, I recommend you read Dianne See Morrison’s worthwhile summary post at MoCoNews.

In my view, social search – search that enables people to add their personal knowledge, opinions, and experiences to search results – has arrived in full force in online. (The market is already teeming with people-powered search engines – ranging from Wikipedia, which recently took the wraps off Wikia, a search service that combines computer-driven algorithms and human-assisted editing to Mahalo, a company building – and paying – contributor communities to direct searchers to relevant results, to nimble newcomers like NosyJoe, a private beta social search engine that relies on people to “sniff the Web for interesting content.”)

The mobile phone – a personal device we have with us at all times – represents the next frontier for social search.

We not only use our mobile phones to capture and share content; we also use them to interface with the world around us and connect with social networks on the fly. As cultural anthropologist Mizuko Ito pointed out in her milestone book Personal, Portable, Pedestrian: The mobile phone has a pivotal place in our daily lives based on the fact that it is personal (we customize and personalize mobile devices and consider them an extension of our personal identity); portable (even the Japanese name for mobile – Keitai, roughly translated “something you carry with you” – stresses the relation between the user and the device, and not between the technology and function); and pedestrian (because it is portable it’s a perfect fit with life as it happens, and activities that require partial or sporadic attention).

It’s on our mobile devices that we have come to expect – even demand – personalized and context-aware services and applications tailored to our lifestyles and life stages based on the clues we leave behind, such as preferences, past purchases, browsing patterns, and a deep understanding of our interests and passions.  What’s more, the form factors of the device – a small screen and a tiny keypad – naturally limit our interest in browsing the Web as we do on a PC. Put another way, users can’t sift through lists of blue links results; they require answers that are genuinely useful and relevant.

Indeed, Internet search retrofitted for the mobile Web suffers some serious shortcomings.

• First, it is one-size-fits all. Whether you are a student, a scientist, or a silver surfer, Internet search engines (horizontal search engines designed from the ground up to deliver the same results to all searchers based on queries and keywords) deliver a similar set of results, regardless of our individual information needs.
• Second, it tends to promote search engine optimized sites over the truly optimal ones. To complicate matters, the mobile Web remains the rather poor cousin of the real Web. There is no cross-linking data to power PageRank algorithms, which is a major reason why regular road tests performed by companies such as Mobile Commerce Ltd. – a U.K. company that, among its many other capabilities – possesses what the founders call a “piece of enablement” that gives them deep insight into the search queries passed through the operator portals in the U.K., and the results set returned to the user – reveal that Google and Yahoo! fall down on the job.
• Third, it has huge difficulty when it comes to connecting with the indexes that are growing and flourishing under the radar, such as blogs, user-created music and videos, and all the cool stuff that makes up the legendary Long Tail. Mobile users expect these content types to figure in their mobile search results, a variety and freshness of content Internet search engines cannot deliver.

Enter “people-powered search,” social search that harnesses people to deliver results tailored to searchers on the basis of who they are and what they like, addresses these issues.

The introduction of an approach that effectively infuses human preferences and human judgments into computer algorithms covers the bases to pinpoint truly relevant information and better answers. What’s more, the personal touch it gives to search results represents a perfect fit with the mobile phone, which we’ve already established is an intensely personal device.

• First, it recognizes the rise of a participatory culture and the role of people in the equation. These are trends that combine to give individuals more of a say over their content experiences. Book marking, tagging, voting, blogging, and networking – all of this is possible on the mobile, allowing us to turn our conversations into content. The rise of mobile social networks and communities paves the way for us all to have more input into our search results.
• Second, it benefits from the increasing popularity of peer recommendation. A recent survey from Jupiter Research shows 64 percent of users will try a service or content recommended by a friend, and 69 percent will pass what they like along to between two and six friends. Naturally, search results – particularly those in response to queries seeking cool new music or good restaurants nearby – would benefit from some crowd-sourcing.
• Third, it taps into new mobile search behavior trends. Mobile search is no longer an action-oriented activity; it has become a recreational pastime. Recent user surveys conducted by comScore, and new research from made-for-mobile search engines Taptu and Abphone, reveal the main emphasis is on content discovery and new ways to amuse ourselves during long commutes or breaks in our daily routine. We do search for information, but we are also interested in cool new stuff, interesting trivia, and ways to have fun.

In summary, the idea of people helping people isn’t about idealism; it’s the basis for an ideal business model. In mobile search, where algorithmic search can deliver neither personalized search results nor peer recommendations, social search and variations that tap the wisdom of crowds to deliver the right mix of answers and entertainment have a clear competitive edge over the plain-vanilla search we know from the PC.

This post sets the stage for an in-depth look at cool new mobile search services – some in beta – sure to leave their mark, so please check back regularly.

Disclaimer: abphone, ChaCha and Taptu have collaborated with MSG on white papers and research.

Gearing up for a whirlwind week in Barcelona for Mobile World Congress. Coverage on MSG will be thin (not enough time for deep-dive posts) but I assure you my follow-up analysis and in-depth video interviews will be worth the wait. Andrea Henninge – bless her! – has managed to squeeze in dozens of top-level interviews/briefings over the next five days at an average rate of one per hour – and even left me some time in the evenings for a few parties and get-togethers.

Top of the list is the launch party (Tuesday) for the Netsize Guide 2009, the 360-page mobile industry almanac I wrote on behalf of Netsize. Stan Chesnais, Netsize CEO, tells me it is the best one ever, and has already commissioned me to write next year’s (although we both struggle to think how we can top this one!).

If you are at Mobile World Congress (MWC), then don’t forget to pick up a paper copy. After the show, you can also download it for free on MSG. I look forward to your comments and feedback. I will continue to pursue this exciting theme (the morphing of the physical and virtual worlds with the mobile device at the center of this new convergence) on MSG, so watch for podcasts and video interviews that take this discussion to the next level.

And speaking of path-breaking, this week mobile search providers Taptu and Abphone debut their white papers on MSG.

(You can download the Taptu white paper by clicking the banner further down on the right-hand side, and you can find abphone’s white paper here.)

I am honored that both companies asked me for input. In the case of Taptu, it’s a comment. Abphone, on the other hand, asked me for a complete foreword.

In fact, Pierre Scokaert, Abphone CEO, sent me a personal email to thank me for my work:

I did read your foreword, and found it very good. It adds a lot of weight to our paper, and having someone as highly regarded as you speak of Abphone is always an honor.

However, I am equally grateful for the opportunity to lend my voice to his – and would like to take the opportunity here to thank Pierre and Yann Mondon, who heads up Abphone’s public relations.

Abphone

I don’t want to give away too much - and before my podcast with Pierre on precisely this topic – so here’s a short, high-level summary of the white paper, titled Snacking the Web.

In a nutshell, a shift in mobile search behavior (search has become a leisure activity, pursued in idle time and short sessions, and made popular by cutting-edge devices such as the iPhone) impacts how services can/should rank search results and determine relevancy. Abphone’s approach emphasizes click stream analysis, effectively drawing from the wisdom of crowds to determine which results users find relevant to the search queries, and ultimately improve rankings for future users.

In my view, this path-breaking approach borrows heavily from the insights outlined in Emergence: The Connected Lives of Ants, Brains, Cities, and Software by Steven Johnson. Ants, Johnson writes, are not intelligent as single insects. But they develop a kind of collective intelligence – which he calls “emergent intelligence” – when they are interconnected in complex colonies.

In the case of mobile search, a single searcher, like an ant, can happen upon an excellent result. But there is no way for the searcher to leave a trail to benefit searchers who follow. As a result, each searcher must endure the same process (click distance) to find content they want. Abphone learns from its users, creating a feedback loop that potentially improves rankings for future users to deliver an overall positive user experience and help people find content they want in fewer clicks.

Allow me to close with my favorite quote from the abphone white paper: Pierre’s rant on Web transcoding

Take a gourmet meal, prepared by capable chefs, using only the finest ingredients. Then put everything in a blender and mix it into a pulp, as long as you need to, until you can drink it through a straw… This is what website transcoding is like.

I like it so much I have just added it to my slide deck for my presentation for the Qualcomm Plaza Internet Forum. The event now counts some 70 top-level attendees, and I am honored that Qualcomm feels the jump in attendance is due to my participation in it. Everywhere there are signs that MSG has indeed reached the tipping point…

Taptu

I am also proud that Taptu has decided to debut its white paper, titled Touch Search: A New Vision For Mobile Search, on MSG. True to the name, the white paper examines the shift in mobile search since the advent of the iPhone.

However, Taptu does more than acknowledge this trend; it has responded with a roadmap to encourage the innovation that content providers and brands agencies will require to deliver an optimized search and advertising experience for touch devices. I’ll have more on this next week, after I have had the pleasure of meeting today (Monday) with Andreas Bernstrom, Taptu COO, and had a closer look at the Taptu’s prototype search services for the Touch Web.

A highlight of the white paper is this trio of industry predictions. (Methodology is explained in the white paper.)

1)      Total global mobile search volume will grow rapidly from 63 million searches per day at the end of 2008 to 620 million in 2012 – almost 10 fold growth in just four years.

2)      The volume of searches from touch phones will grow even faster, to overtake the volume of searches from normal phones by the end of this year.

3)      By 2012, over 75 percent of all mobile searches will come from touch phones alone, representing less than 10 percent of the installed base of phones and just 20 percent of annual shipments.

A root question to consider: Will we have one Web (the Internet)? Or two (the Internet, and made-for-mobile sites)? Or three! (the Internet, the mobile websites, and the Touch Web)…

No one has the answers, but Taptu is preparing now for the challenges ahead.

My thanks again to Steve Ives, Taptu CEO, and Bob Last, Taptu Head of Business Development, for providing me the opportunity to contribute to the white paper.

Voice search

Finally, I would like to take this opportunity to give you a sneak peak of the next white paper in the pipeline: a joint project with Peggy Albright,  founder of Albright : Research : Media, assessing the performance of voice search services on the iPhone.

The white paper – which roadtests ChaCha, Google, and Vlingo — will launch in the week following MWC and be available for download on MSG. I have already twittered about some of the findings (they were too amazing to keep under wraps)…

Let’s just say that Google underwhelmed us – on all counts.

Disclaimer: ChaCha sponsored the white paper. The opinions in the white paper reflect those of Peggy Albright and Peggy Anne Salz, and do not reflect the opinions of the organizations referenced in the research.

Against this backdrop, I have decided to explore the advance of solutions from companies such as Wapple – designed from the ground up to make publishing a no-brainer – and the impact on the mobile Web. (Scott Beaumont, Co-Founder of Mippin, will also make his debut with a guest column next week that walks us through the procedure to mobilize MSG and the bigger reasons why publishers should get involved.)

My take: A lot of content to explore at our finger tips and an increased need for mobile search services that find – and monetize – it. Taptu tops the list – but I see other companies on the horizon that likewise understand the pivotal importance of putting people back in the equation.

I detail this argument in my column for EContent magazine here. One company I’m watching in ChaCha, a mobile search and answers service that launched a year ago this month. (By way of background, ChaCha has developed a “search-with-a-guide” process that lets stumped searchers connect with a live person – in real-time and via an instant message chat for answers in the form of relevant links and results.)

In fact, my associate Peggy Albright and I have spent the last weeks testing ChaCha voice search against the likes of Google and Vlingo and will have the results for you later this month. Keep posted for analysis that may surprise you and a post from Peggy chock-full of our observations and frustrations.

Disclaimer: Taptu has collaborated with MSG on a white paper.

In addition to these great interviews and encounters (doing some face-to-face in London), I have conducted a number of briefings and podcasts for MSG tracking the trends that matter. Among these are mobile search engines (ChaCha, Hiogi), mobile advertising firms (AdMob), and barcode companies (MDS -Mobile Data Systems, Nextcode) that supply symbologies, applications and commerce schemes that link the virtual and physical worlds. I’m excited about the consistent supply of exclusive content and invite you to check back regularly.

I’m likewise excited about the impact MSG is having on the mobile industry, and (as of this month) the publications that cover it.

A picture indeed speaks a thousand words and the decision by ISM, a trade magazine published by Jordan Communications Ltd, to feature our trademark logo on the front cover of the Mobile Internet special issue speaks volumes (!) I am honored and hope to return the gesture by contributing a guest column to ISM soon.

Partnerships, projects and major advertisers: There’s a lot going on behind the scenes at MSG, and next week the executive team meets in London to make some major decisions. Stay tuned!

Finally, I would like to thank the companies and executives that have granted me interviews over the last weeks for their interest and patience. I will post what I can before I fly out on Monday, and the remainder in the week of the 24^th.