I feel like I’m perpetually behind with my blog lately. This tidbit is from a few days ago, but I think interesting enough to still warrant a post.
JumpTap has a nice chart out on their breakdown of search queries from mobile phones. Turns out 12% of the queries can be classified as “adult” in nature.
A few years ago, I worked on the Search team at eBay, specializing in popularity data. As a result, I was able to really go through the data to see what people were searching for, and in what volume. It’s really an amazing insight to see the aggregated searches of millions of people together, ranked. Even on this blog, I still get a kick out of seeing what searches people use to find these articles.
In some respects, I’m a bit surprised that the number is only 12%. I’m not sure I know whether that is low or high. Does anyone know the rough breakdown of adult queries for major search engines like Google or Yahoo?
So, I’ll leave this one with a question to my recently acquired friends at TellMe:
When mobile search moves from text to voice, are people as comfortable making adult queries? Is there an equivalent to these search lists in the voice search space?
Psychohistory 
I personally know that adult queries represent a higher pecentage in mobile search than in traditional search. Most operators will tell you that the most searched terms are related to adult.
Regarding your question, would you see someone make a voice search for “hot milf” while on the bus? 🙂
It’s a very good question (verbal search tendencies)…and we don’t yet know the answer…
Currently, Tellme doesn’t focus on general information search, where you might expect adult search queries and content. We are primarily focused on targeted content, including local business search, stock quotes, sports scores, movies, restaurant reviews, weather, etc.
But, you pose a great question, and I’m curious to see what the answer is when mobile search becomes less targeted and more free-form.
I’m not sure if I’d expect the adult queries to represent a greater piece of the mobile search pie… I assume these queries are mostly targeted towards services or porn – do people really watch porn on the go?