• by Laurie Sullivan  @lauriesullivan, May 11, 2009

Google has released findings from a study that points to new mobile search patterns linked to Apple's iPhone and smart phones running Android. The shift could change advertising and behavioral targeting for mobile search.

The results suggest that iPhone searches mimic computer-based search behavior in terms of query length -- about three words per query for computer and iPhone queries, as opposed to 2.5 words per query for conventional cell phones.

Googlers Maryam Kamvar, Melanie Kellar and Rajan Patel -- as well as Ya Xu, from the Department of Statistics at Stanford University -- worked on the project. The group created a metric for quantifying the variability of a user's search intentions across time. This variability metric, entro-percent, is a "normalized entropy metric" that compares the number of search tasks issued by a user with the number of categories those search tasks fall under.

The group used data in the research from anonymous logs that do not contain personally identifiable information. The sample from approximately 10,000 users of each platform was selected by a random subset of browser cookies that fell into a specific numeric range, according to Kamvar. "Our logs analysis is done on an aggregate-level, which means we're never looking at sequences of searches made by one user," she said.

The most surprising finding was that many trends indicate that searchers on high-end phones are becoming more like computer-based searchers. Not only query length and diversity, but also in repeat search behavior, Kamvar said. "These trends on the high-end phones indicate to us that mobile search is starting to really 'work.' In other words, mobile search is a viable means for users to find information."

The research found the average number of words per iPhone query to be about the same as in computer queries, with slightly fewer characters per query. On average an iPhone query consists of 2.93 words and 18.25 characters. The length of conventional mobile phone queries is the shortest of all the media, with an average query consisting of 2.44 words and 15.89 characters. That is a slight increase from the average of 2.35 words per query reported in the most recent analysis of mobile queries.

Kamvar said information on mobile search patterns can help Google better serve mobile customers. First, the research indicates there is no one search interface that is suitable for all mobile phones. It also suggests that for the higher-end phones, a close integration with standard computer-based functions that personalize features would become beneficial for the user, since the phones are often treated as an extension of consumers' computers.

Today, Google serves up ads on iPhone and Android Search, but the "study shows that properly targeted mobile ads would enormously benefit the advertiser and the mobile user," Kamvar said. "This is because we find mobile users on the non-high-end devices who query a topic seem to be 'loyalists' to a particular topic."

This means that ads on mobile devices would reach the right audience -- people keen on learning more about the topic.