‘Tis the season for mobile searches. That’s what Google apparently thinks ahead of the rapidly approaching holiday shopping season.
“44 percent of total searches for last minute gifts and store locator terms will be from mobile devices this holiday season based on historical growth rates,” Google says, based on established patterns of mobile query growth in recent years.
Since 2009, mobile shopping “patterns” have seen two consistent and profound spikes. The first comes during Black Friday – the shopping bonanza that follows Thanksgiving – and the second is the weekend before the Christmas holiday.
According to Google’s data, mobile users who turn to their handsets for product and gift searches are among the shoppers most likely to actually buy something – either that which they are searching for or something very similar.
From Search Engine Land:
Citing data from a 2011 AdMob survey the company says that 65 percent of respondents answered “yes” to the following question: “Have you used your smartphone to find a business, and then made a purchase at that business-in-person?” But there’s lots of other data that validate the directional accuracy of this “mobile search-to-store” user pattern.
Consequently, Google is projecting that the 2011 holiday shopping season will be the most bustling on record for mobile search and mobile commerce.
