Final countdown
Mobile phone users searched for Facebook more than any other site in 2010, according to research by Mobile Commerce.
The UK firm, which provides monetised mobile search services, said social network terms dominate the top 10 most searched-for sites out of the 40m it deals with every month.
The top 10 mobile search terms of 2010, according to Mobile Commerce are:
- Bebo
- YouTube
- www.facebook.com
- eBay
- Facebook.com
- Hotmail
- Yahoo
- Ebuddy
The firm reckons the top 10 is a good reflection of the makeup for the top 100, where a quarter of searches relate to social networking, including 7 variations of a Facebook search.
Just under a quarter of searches were for email services for variations of Google and Yahoo among others, according to the results.
Meanwhile, according to the top 100, information services also proved popular among UK smartphone users, with searches for the likes of lottery, news, weather, train times and cinema listings making up around a fifth of the list. In fact surprisingly lottery searches were the most prominent and were the 12th most searched term in the top 100.
Perhaps less surprisingly, dating and flirting were a popular pass time for with mobile users in 2010, with related searches accounting for 7 of the top 100 terms. Dating website Plenty of Fish is the 20th most searched term and Flirtomatic came in at number 15.
As with all these ‘most searched for' types of reports there is always an interest in which celebs were most popular in any given year and this year (surprise surprise) it is Justin Bieber who was the 38th most searched term on Mobile Commerce's chart. Cheryl Cole, lady Gaga and JSL all proved popular too.
Perhaps confirming many poeple's predictions that mobile shopping is the next big thing, shopping and banking searches also had a sizeable presence in the top 100 searches. eBay was the 6th most searched for term, followed lower down the chart by Argos and Amazon. However, interestingly, Halifax and Barclays were the only two banks making the top 100 list.
Mobile Commerce's CEO, Steve Page, said: "Many analysts see mobile search as simply the same as PC but with a smaller screen, but that's just not the case. Our detailed search analysis shows that users search differently on mobile, either using the search box as a shortcut to entering a URL, which is often fiddly on a mobile device, or for ‘I need/want it now' searches such as lottery results, train times or weather updates - the kind of things people want to know about when they're on the move."
