Hitwise Report: 58% Of All Searches Are Mobile

August 22, 2016

Research included 3.5 million devices and focused on 11 key categories

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A report from Hitwise that was released earlier this month says that 58% of all searches are made on mobile devices. The data came from a four-week period beginning April 10 to May 7, 2016, included multiple devices and 3.5 million smartphones and tablets.

This report also revealed the type of searches that are most likely to be done on a mobile device across four industries: Retail, Banking, Travel, and Food & Beverage. Some other interesting statistics show that 72% of all Food & Beverage online searches are completed on a mobile device, 68% of health-related searces are mobile, and 56% are retail-related. One of the lowest industries for mobile searches was banking, with only 39%.

The report also concluded that mobile searches are more likely to be structured in the form of a question with words like, “how,” “are,” “where,” and “is.” Mobile searches also played a big role in planning trips and big purchases with searches researching questions early on in the purchasing journey.

The last part of the study shared the most interesting fact, in my opinion. You would think that searches on mobile devices would tend to be shorter and more concise, but this is dead wrong. In fact, the average search on mobile for a food & beverage search is 2.5 words long, or 15.5 characters in length but on desktop that search is 2.2 words or 13.8 characters long. They said the reasons behind this are not clear, but in my opinion, I think this shows the impact of voice searches.

If you are interested in seeing the full report (you’ll need to register to see it), visit the Hitwise website here.

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