Over the last year or so we have noticed a steady increase in the number of searches on our client sites that are conducted from a mobile phone or ipad. The data, which comes directly from our client websites’ Google Analytics, is that the pattern of mobile search is typically 10% to 15% of the total number of searches. This is projected to approach 20% by the end of the year.

To show the importance that the search engines are attributing to mobile searches Google is introducing a new crawler to find content specifically made for smartphones or to search for “redirects” that will point a smartphone to a mobile site.

This means that your website should be constructed to load fast and show well on the small screen of a smart phone. If you are a local business which depends upon reservations and customer contact — pizza shops, restaurants and services come to mind – you may want to consider a mobile site that makes it easy to select the phone number and call.