Search Engines today are increasing their database with more wireless content. What challenges are ahead? and are they prepared for a new way of search. Some big challenges I see with the evolution of wireless search is the delivery method and what is the best format to display the results in.
Consumers want information right away. With wireless broadband we can see this happening, however when we hand-off from one broadband tower to the next as we move around we may be interupted. These hand-offs must move smoothly and be able to resume where we left off. Applications have already been developed for this solution. In all the goal is to keep the consumer happy with their wireless browsing experience. I am sure there are other solutions available but i think the best solutions are yet to come becouse of the wireless infancy stage we are in at this point.
Text based results are of course the best way of displaying information that is queried upon. Results should be displayed in an easy to read format that is short and to the point. I do not want to be continuously pushing the down keypad button on my wireless device. Search Engines have to come up with a solution for rendering a more vertical search response from the beginning to the end of the search queried upon. This means from the consumers point of view when I want to find out some information on something and I go to a search engine website on my wireless device, I would like to have an easy to navigate website structure within 2 to 3 button pushes. Most mobile devices come with T-9 text input for predictive text input so the search querry should be no problem. The results that were queried upon need to come back with a short title and description for the reason that wireless devices have small display screens and search results can return large amounts of information. These search results should have keyword linking, by this I mean suppose you have queried upon the keyword or keyphrase " famouse bridges", there should be more relative link suggestions that show up in the results like "search more on maps and Directions of Famouse bridges" or "search more on Famouse European Bridges" that you can easily click on for more relative results. I stated above the point is to have a good consumer experience with search results on a wireless device.
Wireless Search Engine Marketing will be big business in the next 2 years as if it isnt already. I can see more search engines diving into partnership with handset manufacturers and wireless content providers offering Location Based Services supported by advertising alone. Ringtones and Games are creating big revenue sources for many companies already. Adult services have hit the wireless Internet mainstream.
Location based dating anyone? sure, send me your pic first. I believe Search Engine Portals that will be able to deliver these services to consumers with wireless handheld devices will lead the way into capturing a large piece of the internet pie. There is so much more to talk about, think of the possibilities.
What do you think about wireless search, is it a big part of search engine business?
