Mobile Search: More Intent, More SMB Opportunity

Posted on January 19, 2012 by Thi Thumasathit

It’s no accident that Google, Microsoft, and Facebook are developing ad tools and services for SMBs. A recent Fast Company post reports that 82% of small businesses now have websites, up from 54% three years ago, and all three companies have made significant investments in supporting these smaller advertisers in the last year:

Google has released a small business-friendly version of AdWords (AdWords Express), created free telephone support in about 70 countries, launched a Mobile Site Builder to build simple sites, partnered with American Express on a “Get Your Business Online” campaign in 20 countries, and launched click-to-call phone extensions.
Bing and Yahoo! Search offer “extensive programs to work with local partners”
Facebook continues to build out new ad units and placements that small businesses have started to take advantage of

Having more SMB advertisers obviously improves Revenue per Search for web-based queries on the major search engines. SMB advertisers, however, are limited by their ability to geo target their paid search campaigns. The query either needs to have a geography stated explicitly in the query — e.g., “shoes Des Moines” — or the advertiser needs to depend on imperfect geo-targeting based on IP address. As such, it often doesn’t make sense for a local SMB to bid on a head term like “shoes.”

Mobile changes everything for SMB advertisers. Geography no longer needs to be queried explicitly — all queries issued from a mobile device that has location services turned on will have a precise geo associated with them. Geo then becomes an implicit intent instead of an explicit intent — someone searching for “shoes” in Des Moines is probably much more likely to respond to ad from a shoe store in the immediate vicinity.

The result is a win-win-win situation for everyone: the consumer benefits from a better online experience; SMBs have much larger addressable market; and publishers who are able to infer implicit geographic intents will have more advertisers and higher Revenue per Search or Revenue per Impression.

Every day, more and more queries are issued from a mobile device. As a result, SMBs who are not actively marketing themselves via paid search marketing should start — otherwise, they’ll be missing out on consumers in their neighborhood who are looking for the exact products or services that they sell.