25 to 30% of search from mobile devices by years end
Nowhere have we seen as much in change in technology the last year as with mobile. People are leaving their desktops and laptops for smartphones and tablets.
Jay Yarow (@jyarow), Senior Editor at The Business Insider, reports that search on desktops was down for the fourth straight month in December.
Based on recent comScore stats, Ben Schachter of Macquarie, told Yarrow mobile and vertical search are killing the traditional desktop search business.
We estimate that as much as 25-30% of all Internet search traffic could be coming from mobile devices as of year-end. Moreover, in certain categories, such as restaurants, we believe that well more than 30% of queries are already coming from mobile devices (other key categories such as Consumer Electronics, Beauty & Personal, Finance/Insurance, and Autos also have a meaningful share of mobile queries.
What does this mean for lawyers and law firms?
There are search engines being developed specifically for mobile. Assuming one of them takes hold, and I wouldn’t hold your breath it will happen any time soon, you’d have to optimize for mobile search.
Rather than worry about that, I’d worry more about how the information you share renders in a mobile environment. Does it load quickly? Are there minimal, if any graphics? Was your content, blog, website etc designed for mobile?
It may be more important to design for mobile than the desktop. All those people doing search on mobile are clicking to results on mobile.
I know the experiences I enjoy online and those I don’t. They’re all on mobile.
I love the way I can seamlessly go in and out of Facebook’s mobile environment. I hate the go between search and LinkedIn’s mobile environment. I love Mashable’s mobile interface and the way I experience it from my reader and search.
Law firms need to start being all consumed with mobile. Otherwise you’ll find people like me holding it against you when we arrive on your content from search.