What exactly will be the nature of mobile search in the future? How will technology enable people to conveniently search and retrieve relevant information from the touch of a button from their mobile handset (be it an iPhone, Blackberry or some other smart device)? Say, you are visiting the Grand Canyon or the Empire State Building for the first time and you want to know the history of the site or the building, wouldn't it be nice to point your phone, snap a picture and do a search on the building and get your answers instantaneously. This type of sophisticated search is not far in the future.

A number of companies are looking into capitalizing the new wave of mobile search. For instance Microsoft is working on software called Lincoln that, once downloaded into phones, will allow people to access online movie reviews by just snapping pictures of movie posters, DVD covers, or from an advertisement on a magazine or displayed on the side of buses.

But Microsoft is not alone. There are other players in the market. Kooaba and SnapTell services allows you to point to a real-world object, snap it and send pictures to their servers that will return results relevant to the context of the object.

This technology is not only useful for consumers but also a boon to advertisers who intend to promote products or services through this untouched medium. For publishers it is a great way to measure how readers engage and interact with ads they see. This could be a data mine for advertisers to do further marketing.

There are others who are exploring ways to detect your location using your phone’s GPS location mapping functionality to serve you targeted content. For example, Sprint and Microsoft are teaming up to offer local maps, location of nearby retail outlets, post offices etc based on your location (assuming you carry a GPS capable phone). GeoPedia uses your iPhone’s positional data to find your approx location and then sends wikipedia articles about points of interest around you at that moment. More sites are looking to integrate localized information with social networking capabilities. GyPSii’s WebTop uses GPS, user generated content, photo and video sharing to instantly connect and track people anywhere in the world. Yahoo’s oneSearch allows you to speak your query as you would type in a search box and get relevant results.

Personally I believe that we only just started to scratch the surface of the mobile search technology. Keep reading to stay on top of what’s next in mobile.

Mobile Search continues to be a hot topic as more publishers are putting up mobile websites and off-deck site discovery continues to be a challenge.  Through our Publisher Network of over 200 mobile websites, we see that off-deck traffic is growing and now represents nearly 40 percent of mobile web traffic.  Surprising to some, unlike the online world, less than 4 percent of total mobile web traffic is driven by search engine discovery. 

Perhaps the recent announcement by Yahoo! (see this article in MediaPost) that they are opening up their search APIs to third-party developers will improve these numbers.   By allowing publishers to integrate search into their applications, Yahoo! will hopefully enable more relevant search results, improving user experience and reducing the number of clicks it takes to get the information mobile users need.  Other advancements in voice-enabled search from the likes of Yahoo! and V-Enable will hopefully also improve the quality of mobile search.   Of course, as discussed in a recent panel at CTIA, most voice recognition requires a certain level of human intervention (think 411), which is what inspires companies like ChaCha.  During a panel discussion at Search Engine Strategies, Crisp’s Tom Limongello participated in a panel on mobile search, describing the realities and challenges in effective mobile search.   (Read more on MobileMarketer.)

While mobile search continues to grow, to promote site discovery publishers need to market their mobile sites through existing channels and enable visitors to easily access and bookmark their site.  For example, if you visit CNNMoney.com, and click on mobile, the site allows you to enter your phone number to receive an SMS message with a link to the site.  Other companies, such as Visa Signature, are including a short code or mobile website URL in their outdoor and event marketing to create an immediate call-to-action.  Liken mobile to the early days of the web when suddenly companies began putting their website address on all their marketing materials and advertising.