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“Google’s growing problem: 50% of people do zero searches per day on mobile”

Posted on 21. October 2015 Written by Marcel Weiss

Charles Arthur:

That’s right – the average (“mean”) person does less than one Google search on mobile per day. The mode (most common number) will be below that too. Over a 30-day period, the mean number of mobile Google searches is 27.8.

Mobile is different than desktop.

Mobile search is a real problem for Google: people don’t do it nearly as much as you suspect it would like. But there’s no obvious way of changing that behaviour while users are so addicted to apps on their phones – and there’s no sign of that changing any time soon, no matter whether news organisations wish people would use mobile sites instead (clue: most people get their news via Facebook online). 

This is a structural reality of how mobile is now. Buying Android and make it freely available was a defensive move to stop Microsoft being the gatekeeper to the mobile web (more in my book..). 

But it turns out that search wasn’t actually the gatekeeper to mobile; having a well-stocked app store is. That’s where the searching really happens.

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Analysis and links to articles on the big picture of the tech industry and the networked information economy.

Author: Marcel Weiss is a writer, consultant and fighter for pareto-optima. He is thinking and linking from Berlin, Germany.

contact: marcel@neunetz.com

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