Mobile search - searching the Internet for products and services from a mobile phone or other hand-held device - will be an increasingly important marketing avenue for small business as new cell phone technology gives customers a better ability to shop while on the move.

During a recent conference call to discuss Google’s second-quarter earning results, Sergei Brin, Google’s co-founder, took the opportunity to promote the mobile search technology that is seeing an increasing amount of traffic on a new generation of mobile search-capable “smart phones” - like the new Apple 3G iPhone that was released this summer. Mr. Brin sees mobile search as a significant growth area for the world’s dominant search engine.

Comparing mobile search to regular Internet search, the search engine giant’s co-founder noted the huge advantage that mobile search has for targettng local business products, despite the drawbacks of a much smaller display screen on hand-held mobile devices. “In some respects, you can’t fit as much advertising on a really small screen but on the other hand the queries are really localized,” Mr. Brin told reporters. “There’s an opportunity for much more fine-tuned targeting, and both of those things are going to balance out.”

Sesimi.com is a leader in mobile search for small businesses, building, optimizing and hosting small business web pages that can be fully configured for mobile search. Each Sesimi.com small business web page can display advertising that is optimized to display local search results for its products and services on its customers’ smaller mobile phone screens while still remaining fully-optimized for regular search from a customer’s laptop or home computer.

The importance of having a web page that can be found and read by customers using mobile search from Internet-ready cell phones and mobile devices was underscored by new research from Internet domain registrar, dotMobi, and AKQA Mobile, the mobile division of AKQA, an international creative advertising agency.

The survey amongst consumers in the U.S and U.K. “indicated a strong consumer desire for practical mobile content on cell phones,” according to dotMobi. AKQA Mobile’s managing director reports that, “The enormous popularity of mobile devices has had a profound effect on the lifestyle of the consumer, unleashing new levels of connectivity and personal mobility.”

The results highlight not only the strong co,lnsumer demand for mobile search, but the necessity of having a website that can be found from a mobile phone and content on that site that is mobile search-friendly. Nearly fifty percent of the survey respondents who said they had a poor experience the first time they used the mobile Internet reported that a “poor experience” made them “reluctant to access” that site, or the Internet, again from their mobile phone or device.

Other key findings from the dotMobi/AKQA survey were that:

• Approximately 90% of respondents are “interested in learning about the mobile Web, demonstrating a need for brands to make their mobile properties findable via mobile search, marketing and advertising.”
• 86% of the respondents “said they were interested in knowing which sites are easily accessible on a mobile phone.”
• 50% of respondents were unaware that there are web sites that are accessible by mobile phone.

One further finding seems key, particularly given all the press about the hottest, new mobile device – the Apple iPhone. “Only 2 percent of participants in the survey who have purchased a phone in the past six months chose an iPhone,” according to dotMobi. “This indicates that brands that don’t optimize their mobile services for a variety of mobile phones will provide a substandard mobile Internet experiences for a vast majority of consumers.”

While the dotMobi/AKQA research was geared towards companies marketing large consumer brands, it underscores how important mobile search is becoming, and will become, for small, local business. Sesimi.com builds and hosts small business web pages that are optimized to appear in the local search queries that customers are using to find local products and services online. A Sesimi.com web page is easily and affordably capable of being optimized for mobile search as well, affording small businesses the same advantage in online marketing that large companies are accessing to get their brands and products in front of an increasingly mobile, Internet-savvy host of consumers.

Mobile media analysis mogul, M:Metrics, released a summary of their study on how and where smartphone users in the United States and United Kingdom are spending their time online. The results should be thought-provoking for small businesses which are increasingly relying on the local search capabilities of potential customers to find their ‘bricks-and-mortar” storefronts online before they visit these businesses’ actual locations.

The M:Metrics press release shows that smartphone users in the U.S. (and this study did not include users of either of the most popular iPhone or BlackBerry devices) spend over four and a half hours per month online from their moblies: and their most frequent and popular destination was Craigslist, where they speculate mobile search of classified ads, such as for yard sales and local happenings, is the driver for mobile users.

“Among smartphone users in the United States, mobile browsing has increased 89% year over year, and pageviews have increased 127 percent,” M:Metrics’ senior analyst Mark Donovan observes. The increasing popularity of U.S. online search, which is higher than in the U.K. and where local search and commerce seem to be the more dominant focus, is attributable, according to M:Metrics, to “the relative popularity of flat-rate data plans in the U.S., where 10.9 percent of users have an unlimited data plan versus only 2.3 percent in Britain.”

Revieiwng M:Metrics numbers, Web journalist, Stephen Lawson, writing in Macworld notes, “Mobile surfers in the U.S. spend more time on classified-ad site Craigslist than on any other website, and they spent nearly twice as much time browsing as their British counterparts.” It is likely, one would assume that ecommerce will play an ever-bigger part of moblile search as technology and familiarity expand.

As small business and growing businesses increasingly embrace the potentials of local search and mobile search to grow their revenue streams - ensuring their sites can be found and read online - the increasing familiarity of the consuming public in North American and in Europe with mobile search technology will undoubtedly push these numbers higher and higher. Expect the huge year-over-year growth rates to continue and accelerate.

There are ever greater opportunities for businesses of all sizes to reap the benefits of emerging local search and mobile search technologies. In an interview with CNBC’s Maria Bartiromo, yesterday - an interview credited with bumping Google’s share price 4.7% - Google CEO, Dr. Eric Schmidt, called the emerging capability for consumers to conduct local searches using mobile phone technologies (cell phones, iPhones, BlackBerries etc.) “a tremendous opportunity” for growth.

Google’s research indicates that over the next three or four years, another billion mobile phones will be added worldwide. Eventually, there will be “five or so billion mobile phones in a world of six billion or so,” Dr. Schmidt predicts. Integrating local search and mobile search capabilities will be a key for driving these customers to local businesses.

Schmidt, not surprisingly, travels with the requisite array of laptop, cell phone PDA etc. He notes there has been “a huge increase in maps, Google Maps”, particularly, he says, has been “hugely successful”. Internet mapping, especially Google and Yahoo! maps, is the key ingredient in optimizing both a business’ local search and mobile search capabilities. “When I want to go to the equivalent of Starbucks,” Schmidt says, “I just type ‘Starbucks‘, it says its over there. For me, that’s jusut a huge - a huge improvement. And that service is available almost everywhere in the world.” (As an avid caffeine addict, I can only add my, “Me too!”)

As technical innovations improve local and mobile online searching - and Dr, Schmidt intimates there is a pipeline of innovations at Google awaiting rollout - it seems clear that optimizing your company’s website for local and mobile search - whether you are a turnkey operation, a small business, or a medium-sized growth business - is an imperative. It may seem daunting, especially for the small entrepeneur, but the investment of time, money and effort will be a necessary investment for your company’s success.

Working with a search engine optimization company that specializes in local search and has experience working with a range of clients from small, owner-operated companies to large firms, may be the best way to ensure your company’s footprint is out there and can be found with ease by your potential customers. You do not want to miss the “tremendous opportunity” that industry leaders, like Dr. Schmidt, have so clearly identified.

Day 2 at SMX Denver provided a couple of sessions that exemplified what people expect to see when they come to any conference or seminar.

In the SEO Best Practices for Mobile session, three different presenters laid out step by step guides to mobile SEO. Cindy Krum from Blue Moon Works Inc gave a terrific presentation. Read Cindy’s seo/ppc/email blog for a how to on mobile search.

Greg Markel from search engine marketing firm , Infuse Creative and Rachel Pasqua, from digital marketing agency, iCrossing also provided clear game plans for mobile search.

During the, “Show Me the Money! ” afternoon session Justin Sanger from local advertising firm LocalLaunch provided a clear roadmap for small business marketing.

During the same session, Alfred Chow of (IYP) YellowBook commented on an audience question of consolidation in the local search space. I have often wondered why a major search engine hasn’t acquired an internet yellow pages company. The feet on the ground that IYP’s possess would be huge for the right company.

But, for the first time I am beginning to understand..why would IYPs sell when they believe they can win the local search battle. Stay tuned…

Day one of the first local and mobile search expo proved to be an interesting day. Highlights included presentations from Michael Jones, chief technology officer, Google maps and Google earth and Chris Smith , lead strategist, Netconcepts.

Michael Jones gave us a vision of the new local search, including, not only building geographically organized information but creating “a sense of place” around the image it presents.

Chris Smith, of NaturalSearchBlog discussed the difficulties surrounding mobile search and PPC options for mobile.