Annual mobile phone sales are predicted to hit 1 billion by 2009 and there are already 4 times as many internet-enabled phones in the world than there are PC's.

According to Dotmobi (www.dotmobi.net), one third of the global population are connected via mobile phones today and approximately half are expected to be using a mobile Internet phone by 2008. An IPSOS survey suggests that 29% of mobile phone users in the UK searched for news and information on their handset during 2005.

The statistics are impressive and will get any marketers pulse racing. But it does seem as if we've been hearing about the potential of mobile search market for some time, and yet very few travel companies appear to be active in the mobile search space and mobile e-commerce revenues are still modest.

Up until now most advertisers have been ignoring mobile as a marketing channel, according to a new report by Forrester Research called "Interactive Marketing Channels to Watch in 2007." It suggests that only 13 percent of marketers use mobile text message ads and only 11 percent bother advertising on wireless application protocol (WAP) sites. It seems clear that advertisers are waiting for evidence that the market is there before deciding to jump in themselves.

Barrier and limitations to growth
Despite the huge number of people that have access to the mobile internet there are a number of barriers to mobile web adoption. For example;

1. Cost and clarity - carrier data plans can be expensive and confusing compared to normal internet access plans.

2. Screen Size - the limited screen size of many hand sets negatively impacts the user's browsing experience.

3. Ease of use - due to the limited screen size there is an increased number of clicks needed to get to content.

4. Lack of content - there is a 'walled garden' approach to the content offered by many mobile network operators which means that not all mobile users get full access to content.

Competition - the WiFi explosion
Another factor that may have impacted on the growth of mobile internet usage is the increasing availability of high-speed WiFi internet access in many public areas. Airports, hotels, bars, libraries and commercial shopping centres are increasingly offering WiFi, and it's often free. This has encouraged users to use laptops and PDA's to access the internet while on the move rather than through mobile phones.

Mobile is the perfect advertising platform
Despite these barriers to growth travel companies cannot afford to ignore the e-commerce and marketing potential of this platform. All of the barriers to growth outlined above will be overcome over time as technology improves and network and content providers adapt their services to facilitate the growth. The issue is not really whether the mobile search market will make an impact, but how it will make an impact.

In many ways mobile is the perfect advertising platform. It's always with the consumer, it's always on, it provides personal profiling data, it provides location data, it's interactive and it has multiple billing options already built in.

At present the major bulk of mobile searches are related to ring tones, news, entertainment, maps and directions, directory listings, local restaurants and other local services. As many as 60,000 UK users a day are checking train times on their mobile phones.

Local search is clearly the natural mobile advertising opportunity. Going forward, more complex searches and bigger transactions will become viable as technology advances and users become more comfortable with using their handsets for searching.

In a recent Travelmole interview, Nancy Lyndhurst, the product manager for O2, said some of the larger travel brands like Cathay Pacific, Accor Hotels and KLM are already successfully marketing with mobile technology. She also cites the example of Lastminute who received a £3,000 holiday booking online from a customer using their mobile telephone.

Mobile marketing spend to reach $11 billion by 2011
A recent report by the telecom division of Informa Group stated that advertisers are expected to spend a massive $11 billion on mobile marketing by 2011. Optimistic predictions like this have compelled the major search engines to start making significant investment in the future of mobile search themselves.

Google have predicted that their own mobile division, based in London, will "become the biggest driver of new business" for the company.

Google has developed its own mobile search engine and has signed a number of deals to provide mobile search services to major operator portals. Motorola have even agreed to add a dedicated "Google" button to some of its hand sets. LG, one of the top 5 mobile firms in the world, have announced that they will start to ship handsets pre-loaded with Google services from this month.

Yahoo has unveiled a new application called Yahoo Go Mobile which makes its various services available on certain phones. Not to be outdone, Microsoft launched Live Search for Mobile in February at the 3GSM World Congress in Barcelona.

There are also a number of start ups like Jumptap and Medio who will be bringing services to the new mobile search space.

It's clear that the major search properties, in partnership with the phone manufacturers and network services, are intent on driving the mobile search sector forward. With this kind of momentum there's no doubt that mobile search marketing will eventually become a major part of online marketing, it's just a question of when. Could 2007 be the year of mobile search?

As discussed in the article above, the mobile search market is still in its infancy and many advertisers are taking a 'wait and see' approach. This lack of competition in the mobile search space surely presents an opportunity for businesses to get a head start on their competitors. While most advertisers are reluctant to commit, it is relatively straightforward to get positioned well in the natural search listings of the mobile search engines, and PPC programme click costs are still comparatively low.

So, how do you start to market your business on the mobile web? The good news is that a mobile search marketing campaign is relatively simple to set up.
But before you can promote your website to the mobile search market you need to ensure that it is compatible with mobile screens (you can view your site through a mobile screen here), or you need a specifically designed site in a mobile ready format such as XHTML, WML, or iMode.

The reality is that most sites will be difficult to adapt to small mobile screens and will not have the simplified functionality that is required by mobile users, so a dedicated mobile site is preferable. Fortunately, mobile sites are relatively cheap and quick to build. You can also register a .mobi domain so that users (and search engines) will know that your site is fully mobile compatible.

Once you have your site established, accessing the mobile search market is now quick, easy and cost effective with both Google and Yahoo offering the ability to place PPC text ads on their mobile web search engines. There are also other 3rd party mobile ad network providers such as Admob (www.admob.com) that allow you to place contextual ads on selected content.

In addition, mobile websites can be optimised for high visibility in the natural search results of the mobile websites using conventional SEO tactics. You can even submit a Google Mobile Sitemap. As few business have mobile ready websites the competition for valuable screen real estate is surprisingly light and it is relatively easy to get well positioned on the mobile search engines.

While the majority of people may not yet be ready to book their holidays on a mobile handset, there is clearly a business for other travel and tourism related suppliers like hotels, restaurants, bars, clubs, golf courses, attractions, tour guides and other local services.

Very few businesses have mobile versions of their websites, so there is an opportunity to get ahead of your competitors through early exposure for your products and services on the mobile web.

Every month we will take a question from a reader relating to the marketing of their travel website in the search engines, and we will publish an answer from an expert in the appropriate field. This week the question and answer has been supplied by Mark Scriven, the MD of Turismotec Ltd, a search marketing firm that specialises in the travel business sector.

" A client of mine who prefers to remain anonymous was recently approached by an agency offering to increase the visibility of their website on multilingual search engines without having to translate their website. Their service involves creating a translated and optimised version of the home page in as many languages as required. The client asked for our views on the value of this type of service and whether we thought it would be effective. This is our response;

Clearly, if you want to sell your holidays into other language markets then translating and optimising your site in the local languages would be a key part of this.

However, there are some issues with the proposed approach that need to be considered;

1. The first thing to make clear is that if your site is ranked well in the English language versions of the major search properties then it will also be ranked in the foreign search engines. For example, if you go to Google Spain (www.google.es) and just type in your company name (or a phrase that your site ranks well for in Google.com) you will see your site appear in the listings.

This is because the default setting of the foreign language versions of most major search engines is the global database. This is the same in any language version of Google (and other major search engines).

There are 2 other search options; 'Pages in Spanish' and 'Pages from Spain'. If you make the same search after selecting either of these 2 options your site will not appear. To appear in a 'Pages in Spanish' search you need to have some Spanish content on your website. To appear in a 'Pages from Spain' search you need to have an .es domain or have your site hosted in Spain. So, just optimising one site page will only allow you to enter the 'Pages in Spanish' option index, not 'Pages from Spain' index.

2. Translating and optimising just one site page will only allow you to effectively target 2 or 3 search phrases, so your exposure will be very limited. If a business is serious about wanting to access the German market, for example, then a much greater number of site pages need to be translated into German and then optimised in order to create any real level of exposure for your target search phrases.

3. You also need to take into account that if you are marketing to a foreign language audience you are likely to need to have staff within your company that can deal with enquiries in that language, otherwise you are unlikely to convert many of the enquiries.

If you are serious about wanting to market your business on foreign language websites simply optimising your home page into various languages is not an effective way of doing this. We would recommend that you have your website professionally translated into the target languages, and then optimised by search marketing experts native in those languages."

etravel.success is a free, monthly email newsletter discussing the latest news and information in the world of search engine marketing and online marketing for the travel industry.

If you have a question that you'd like answered by our team of experts, or if you would like to contribute an article or news piece please write to Mark Scriven at etravel.success@turismotec.com.

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