What Are Chinese Mobile Users Search For?

Written by Tangos on January 19, 2007
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mInfo, a Chinese mobile search provider who claimed it having over 6 million registered users by the end of 2006, released some data on its users’ mobile searching behavior in 2006.

According to mInfo, 41% of its users used mInfo to search for local business information such as bars, hotels and ATMs, 31% search for information such as stock quotes, sports scores, price promotions and flight schedules, the rest (28%) use mobile search to find ring tones, pictures, mp3, games and other kinds of content.

The five leading search categories in 2006 were:
1. Dining/Recreation
2. Jokes/Riddles
3. Ring tones/Pictures
4. News/Stock
5. Weather forecast

mInfo thought query model for mobile search is quite different from web search, mobile users tend to use longer query strings (5-6 words/query) vs. about two words per query of web search. However, I think the main reason of such difference is because mInfo encourage its users to use nature language for search.

mInfo also found the search diversity is much higher on mobile. According to traffic data from a leading Chinese Internet search engine, the top 1000 keywords account for over 70% of all search traffic. However, for mobile search, the top 1000 queries account for only about 20% of the searches.

The interests of mInfo’s users will also change with age. According to mInfo, the 19-24 year old group seemed most interested in ring tones and pictures while the 25-29 year old group was more heavily weighted towards local search. The 30-34 year old group tended to spend more time on travel and news related searches.

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