14 DAY TRIAL // Mobile web usage is always growing. There's no debate about that and Google has been one of the companies that have said this the most, the web is going mobile.
Now, Google has some more numbers and predictions to both give us an idea of how the mobile web is growing and to have advertisers and websites prepare themselves for the shift.
Mobile web traffic sees a surge around the holiday season and shopping-related searches are increasingly done from mobile devices rather than desktops.
This year, Google expects that 44 percent of all shopping-related searches in the US will come from mobiles during the holiday season. That's quite a bold statement, but Google has plenty of data to back it up.
Mobile traffic has been growing, exponentially, for the past few years and there's a clear trend around the holiday season, traffic increases dramatically.
There are two peaks during that period, the first is in the week of Black Friday, when retailers all over US offer big discounts. The second peak is in the week before Christmas, as users look for gift ideas, prices and more information on things they're considering to buy.
Google has provided a chart describing this trend, for the past two years and the two peaks are clearly visible. The difference is that traffic is three times bigger in 2010 compared to the year before that.
What's also evident from the chart is that mobile traffic, for the searches used in the graph, is growing constantly and, six months into 2011, it has almost reached the peak volume from the last holiday season.
If the growth trend continues, and there's no reason that it won't, mobile traffic will set new records this year. It's easy to see why too, a huge number of smartphones but also tablets were sold in 2011 and many more will be sold by that time. [via Search Engine Land]