Report: Google dominates 97% of mobile search spending

Mobile services now account for almost 5 percent of paid search spending in the U.S., and are on pace to represent 10 percent of the market by the end of 2011 according to data issued by banking and investment firm Macquarie Group. At the current rate of growth, the U.S. mobile paid search segment is on track to end the year at an overall value of $1.1 billion--Macquarie notes that Google (NASDAQ:GOOG) alone rakes in almost 97 percent of U.S. mobile search spending, with Yahoo and Microsoft's (NASDAQ:MSFT) Bing dividing the remaining 3.2 percent.

Restaurants account for 29.6 percent of total Google mobile queries, Macquarie Group states. Automotive-based queries make up 16.8 percent of mobile searches, followed by consumer electronics (15.5 percent), finance and insurance (15.4 percent) and beauty/personal (14.9 percent). The report adds that while click-through rates on mobile campaigns remain 30 percent lower than on the desktop, cost-per-click rates on mobile are 13 percent higher than on PCs.

Last fall, Google reported that mobile search queries had increased 500 percent over the past two years, with the digital services giant now on track to generate more than $1 billion in annual revenue from its mobile search and display advertising initiatives.

"Clearly, this is the future of search in the Internet," said Google Senior Vice President of Product Management Jonathan Rosenberg during the company's third quarter 2010 earnings call in October. "Our mobile search queries have grown five times over the past couple of years, and of course, a lot more of those queries are now coming from Android phones."

For more:
- read this Search Engine Land article

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