I’m not at TechCrunch Disrupt in New York, but several tweets coming out of the event indicate the Google’s Doyenne of Local, Marissa Mayer, reiterated on stage there that 20% of PC searches are related to location.
However, she also introduced a new number into the discussion, saying that local searches constitute 40% of all mobile searches (Microsoft has said this number is 53%). This figure appears to replace an earlier 33% or “one-third of mobile searches are local” that was repeatedly mentioned by Google executives including Eric Schmidt.
But what do these numbers actually mean in terms of real volumes?
On the PC, 20% means about 2.2 billion queries in the US each month have a local intent. (The number is conservative.)
It’s somewhat harder to do the mobile calculation because no third party like comScore is reporting on total mobile query volumes. And yet we can still do some “back of the envelope math” using the totality of data available to us. (Drum roll please.)
Dan Miller and I broadly estimated that Google mobile searches (which are growing) are now between about 1.9 and 2.4 billion queries each month in the US. From that base we calculated that Google sees approximately 650 million to 795 million local-mobile queries each month.
This was before the 40% number was made public.
Using the same topline figures, a straight 40% calculation puts the number of monthly local-mobile queries between about 760 million and 960 million. Those numbers “feel” high — the first set of numbers above feel more accurate to me — but it’s a bunch of guesswork at this point.
I’m inviting Google to jump in and help clarify.
May 29th, 2011 at 12:52 pm
[...] Testimonials from SMB Sites Starting to Show in Places Using hReview on Your Website Google: 40% of Mobile Searches Local Yelp’s Community Strategy and Google How Yelp Crushed Citysearch & Yahoo Local … & Why [...]
July 6th, 2011 at 8:25 pm
Google is moving more and more to voice search. The app that comes pre-installed on Android phones allows you to say the same of a local business and it usually defaults to the Google Places profile and the number can be clicked from the screen.
The idea of using a phone book is becoming as crazy as heating up your dinner in the oven.
July 13th, 2011 at 4:40 pm
[...] about mobile search. At TechCrunch Disrupt recently, Google’s Marissa Mayer shared that 40 percent of Google searches on mobile devices have local intent, while Microsoft puts that number at 53 percent. Other [...]
September 13th, 2011 at 1:20 pm
[...] To see the intimate connection between local and mobile one needs to look no farther than new data from Nielsen showing the reach of various apps on the Android platform in the US. (Google has said that 40% of mobile search queries are local.) [...]
December 4th, 2011 at 8:00 pm
[...] mei heeft Google bekend gemaakt dat 20% van het zoekverkeer lokaal gebaseerd is, via de smartphone is dat maa… Bing geeft zelfs aan dat 53% van de zoekresultaten lokaal is. Tijd voor lokale online marketing [...]
December 19th, 2011 at 5:39 pm
[...] to Google’s Marissa Mayer, local searches constitute 40% of all mobile searches (Microsoft has said this number is 53%). With mobile device usage increasing rapidly, you don’t [...]
December 20th, 2011 at 6:13 pm
[...] an increasing part of search is mobile, there’s more to mobile marketing than search. Social platforms are also increasingly being used [...]
January 5th, 2012 at 5:31 am
[...] Secondly, when it comes to being found in local search from consumers with strong intent (looking for a place to eat) Google Places is extremely powerful. Because local search results garner not only the highly coveted top left section of the first page of local Google searches, it is also a critical piece to making sure that your restaurant will be found when people are searching Google Maps on their mobile phone. Earlier this year at TechCrunch Disrupt, Google Announced that 20% of searches from PCs and a whopping 40% of searches done from mobile phones were about local businesses. [...]
January 23rd, 2012 at 5:01 pm
[...] In fact, recent studies show that nearly 20% of searches are local (also reported by Google), and 40-50% of mobile searches are local, according to Google and [...]
January 30th, 2012 at 11:50 pm
[...] queries; all that means is that you need to work on broad keywords. Other than that we learned that mobile searchers are often local searchers, so if you have a local business you need a website and you need to think about SEO. Aside from, [...]