SEO And The Expanding Mobile Market
[]Editor’s note
This is a 20 October 2010 response to The Kelsey Group’s Mobile Local Media Forecast for 2008–2013. The forecast, its figures, and the handset assumptions below are historical. Mobile interfaces, search systems, and site delivery have changed since then, but the archive remains useful because it shows an early attempt to connect search intent with the user’s immediate context. It should not be read as a current mobile SEO checklist.
The original argument
The Kelsey Group, a research firm based in Chantilly, Virginia, had released research on mobile-device usage. Its Mobile Local Media Forecast estimated 130.5% growth in local mobile search and 81.2% growth in overall mobile advertising over the period it covered.
Local search advertising was forecast to grow from $20 million to $1.28 billion over the same period.
The most important part of the forecast, as I saw it then, was that the largest area of mobile growth would be local. Social media and mobile banking would grow too, but the expected increase in mobile traffic was tied to looking up addresses or phone numbers, finding nearby places, and making city-specific searches.
The questions for a site owner in 2010 were simple: was the site usable on a mobile device, and did its content match local search intent? A mobile searcher often wanted an address, phone number, opening time, or nearby option quickly. A small screen and slower hardware also made a stripped-back mobile experience attractive at the time.
The post suggested testing a site across different handsets with Keynote’s mobile-experience software and considering a separate mobile version where necessary. That advice belongs to the web of 2010. The durable observation is that a page should answer the searcher’s immediate question in the context in which it was asked.
For a current implementation, translate that observation into a responsive, keyboard-usable page with readable text, clear tap targets, and the same essential information across supported viewports. That is a present-day baseline, not a claim about the 2010 forecast.
