Mobile Local Search, the most popular Internet application
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Mobile Local Search, the most popular Internet application. It certainly is not true today but it won’t be long before it is. In other words, this forecast is that more Internet visitors will use Mobile Local Search than will use any other Internet application. It’s only a question of time and probably not too long a time.
Some may find this forecast suspect, but there are strong reasons for stating this so confidently. Indeed part of the argument can be confirmed by a little personal reflection. Before getting into the reasoning, it is perhaps worth mentioning how this provocative scenario came to mind. It was triggered by a thoughtful post, Local Search at Rest, and Local in Motion, by William Slawski, who is one of the most erudite commentators of this scene. He and Mike Blumenthal have had some communications on whether Google Maps (Local) data will become more accurate and useful over time. They are both pretty sure that it will. However it is not the product development that drives the forecast I discussed earlier but rather the market demand. Let’s spell out the reasons.
A) The Mobile Web is/will be very much bigger than the regular Desktop PC Web. This is being seen most clearly in Asia with Europe coming along and the U.S. at the back of the pack.
B) Local Search has always been an important demand even before the Internet existed. That’s why most homes and offices had directories of all kinds: white pages, Yellow Pages, local directories, trade directories and the list went on. Remember when you could speak to a human being at 411 and together try to figure out where that Italian restaurant was with the funny name.
C) That demand still exists and regrettably the various Yellow Pages never seem to have leveraged the incredible assets they had. Their search functions are still very error prone, serving up telephone numbers for completely nonsensical companies and not always including the one you’re really looking for. If you’ve bothered to use an online 411 process, just think of the last half dozen searches you’ve done to confirm the truth of this.
D) Of course the data is not very clean as William Slawski and Mike Blumenthal pointed out. However the demand, particularly on the Mobile web, is so strong that whoever gets it right will have a real gold mine. Particularly when on the go with your Mobile device, the Mobile web is the only way to go to find what you’re looking for. Directories are irrelevant.
E) Given this, there is every incentive for Google to put a lot of effort into this application. No one else is likely to catch them.
As William Slawski notes in one of the comments on his Local Search post, “The intuitiveness and ease of use of a service like 877-520-FIND can help grow a user base for the information, and that may be incentive for many businesses to put more effort into getting their business information into those local searches.” I don’t believe there’s a need to grow the user base. We’re all eager to get such data and have been for many years. It would seem to be a big win/win/win opportunity for everyone.
Tags: Mobile, local search
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November 11th, 2006 at 12:17 pm
Hi Barry,
Great example with the Italian restaurant with the funny name.
Regretfully, I had that experience a couple of weeks ago. The restaurant is only a couple of months old, has no web site, hasn’t been reviewed by the local newspapers, and has no footprints on the web at all. Fortunately for them, word of mouth has drawn customers to their doors.
A client and I have occasional business dinner meetings, and we both wanted to try the new restaurant, which we were both referring to as “the place where Lum’s used to be.”
Mobile local web search is a transformational technology. Like the radio, the telephone, and television before it, mobile local provides a way to interact with the world in a manner that changes how we do so significantly. I agree completely that it will become the most popular internet application. I think that what we’ve seen so far from it only scratches the surface of what we will gain from it, too.
November 11th, 2006 at 2:39 pm
That’s an interesting thought, Bill, that Mobile Local Search could be a Transformational Technology. It’s a powerful phrase that doesn’t seem to have a very visible definition. Pat Gratton back in 2000 tried to explore the concept of Transformational Technology. I didn’t find too much more about it.
It would seem that AI (Artificial Intelligence), Nanotechnology and even Blogging might be examples. How do they compare with the radio, the telephone, and television? I guess the earliest example is the printing press. .. or was it the wheel?
Clearly the cell phone (mobile device) was such a technology. I think I’m inclined to agree with you that Mobile Local Search has such implications that it could also have its rightful place in the list.
November 12th, 2006 at 11:36 pm
I think you can see an interesting progression in Google pushing local data out: first on the desktop, next with SMS text messaging, then with 520-FIND and now with Mobile Maps….
As the data and the technology have improved, they are pushing the same data out an increasing number of paths, growing the user base each time as they go and growing it exponentially.
I agree with Bill that this is transformational technology. I also think that we are at the beginning of the acceptance curve analogous to digital cameras 1989-90 although the acceptance rate could be much quicker.
The computer has not achieved the tranformational impact of the sewing machine or the car and it probably won’t in its desktop/laptop form. But in the form of a smart phone with data access in the hands of billions it might achieve parity
December 12th, 2006 at 2:40 pm
[...] Of course whatever is proposed to handle this problem must work for Mobile Local Search since that likely will be the most popular Internet application. While thinking over this problem, a simple business card caused a light bulb to come on. Why shouldn’t a web page have a kind of virtual business card that gave the key contact coordinates? Thus was born the idea of a LURI (Location Uniform Resource Identifier). Every web page (URI) would have its associated LURI. This would be a mini-web page that could display the contact coordinates even on a cell phone screen. The LURI would be set out according to some agreed standard so that a given line would be used for say the City in which the entity behind the website is located. Further details are given on the right under Basic Concepts and the idea will be elaborated in future posts. This is the subject of a pending patent. [...]
January 21st, 2007 at 1:12 pm
[...] As we have suggested before, Mobile Local Search will be the biggest Internet application in use and in cash spin-offs. However surprisingly it’s turning out to be much tougher to find a local pizza restaurant than it is to search the globe. There’s a lot of effort going into Local Search and it’s tough to stay on top of it and see the wood for the trees. [...]
June 20th, 2008 at 10:19 am
I’ve heard of disruptive technology before…the ipod has been called that. Do you think mobile local search can be considered that?
June 20th, 2008 at 10:38 am
Certainly the implications of mobile local search will have a huge effect on traditional ways of getting visibility on the local scene. To that extent, it clearly is disruptive.