It shouldn’t come as much of a surprise that people are using Google mobile search to find porn, but a new study has found that this type of search is twice as likely to happen as on Google on computers. Nearly 1 in 5 mobile searches are looking for adult entertainment, with the runners up being general interest entertainment, telecom, local services and games.
Sceptics of porn consumption on mobiles point to high costs in both content and data download charges, as well as small screens. But on the plus side, the mobile phone is with you all the time and can cater for those sudden spontaneous urges to say, search for a game (what else?). The mobile is also less likely to be shared, along with one’s browsing history. In fact, according to a recent Wired article, 63% of Americans wouldn’t lend their phone to anyone and just maybe, the two facts are related.
Having said that, the early history of the net shows that porn search was once just as high as we’re now seeing on mobile. However, as people become more and more used to search, they find more and more things they want to search for. So will the same thing happen here?
My view is that search on phones isn’t going to be as important in the short to medium term as the big players think it is. While data charges are high and the user interface clumsy, you really need to want to find something now, to consider using your mobile, rather than waiting to get back to the computer. Or you’re looking for something that you can consume on a mobile anyway, which is certainly the case with gaming and porn, but add other forms of content and the old favourite, gambling.
A few other surprises were revealed in the study. About 1 in 5 searches were for full URLs as in http://www.mobhappy.com, which demonstrates that many people are misunderstanding what they’re actually doing - treating Google Search as if it is actually a browser.
And that the average number of characters and words used in a mobile search is almost the same as on a computer. It seems that people aren’t tempted to reduce the terms in deference to the more difficult interface. However, I’d also guess that much of the search activity is currently being driven by young people to whom text input on a phone is as easy as breathing.
Via eWeek
Hi Russell and readers of MobHappy
What could make us more mobhappy than mobile sex, eh? So of course had to read your posting on the topic and it was as usual, excellent.
The findings and user preferences around personal content of adult nature also match three recent SMS-dating/romance related studies that could be of interest to your readers:
In Italy Tegic ran a survey of SMS use in romance in November 2005 and reported that 41% of Italian adults in romantic relationships had snooped inside their partners’ phones.
Not that Italians are particularly nosey. Halebop and Telia ran a survey of Swedish use of SMS in romance in Feb 2006, and found that in Sweden the reported rate is 67% of Swedes who have snooped inside their partners’ phones. Are Swedes more untrusting of their partners or more honest about their behaviour (or perhaps is Swedish equality ranging more into it being more acceptable to snoop inside your partner’s phones)
Well, not to be left undone, there was a February 2006 UK survey reported in the Independent. It did not give the number of times Brits have snooped inside their partners’ phones, but it did reveal, that of those who were caught being unfaithful in the UK, 65% were caught by their partner snooping in their mobile phone..
These strongly support the reasons why the American survey found two thirds refusing to let anyone look inside their phones.
More about romance, youth and SMS in my fourth book, Communities Dominate Brands, and our blogsite of the same name at http://www.communities-dominate.blogs.com
Keep up the excellent work here at MobHappy. One of my “can’t miss” blogsites.
Tomi T Ahonen
author and consultant
website http://www.tomiahonen.com
[...] Following a comment by best selling business authorTomi Ahonen on my post about sex and mobile search on Tuesday, I was inspired to raid the extensive MobHappy archives for this post on the Shag Phone - in case you hadn’t seen it. [...]
People type full urls into google’s mobile search so that the resulting web site is passed back through Google - you don’t connect directly, google proxies the content. At the same time Google also strips out stuff that your handset wouldn’t be able to display, so you get a better mobile readable site.