Search is going mobile. The number of people accessing the web on their mobile phones is skyrocketing. Searching on your mobile or cell phone is different than searching on your computer: The screen is smaller and typing can be a hassle. To make your mobile searching fun and easy we present five great tools for mobile web search.

If you have an iPhone, you have probably already seen our Top 5 iPhone search apps article. But whether you are surfing the web from a regular cell phone, a smart phone or a web enebled PDA, searching is bound to be important to you. The five tools presented here, work on all platforms. The winners are:

Google Mobile

It starts out a bit confusing: When you first come to Google Mobile, you find no search box. Instead, Google pushes apps and a huge number of services. Click “Web” for web search.

Once you are in the right place, though, the rest is easy. You are spared the trouble of typing more than strictly necessary, as Google suggests search terms as you type. The search results are easy to scan and it is no hard to get an overview of your field of interest.

The search results are based on the principle of universal search: You get images, news, maps and more, depending on your query.

It is easy to set your location by your phone’s GPS. And Google’s local search is the only one that offered no problems in that respect. It finds relevant local businesses even here in Norway and phone number and link to directions are displayed for each business.

News search (along with images and buzz) is available via a link on the front page. I get local news by default (e.g. news about the Chile earth quake in Norwegian).

If you want to search Buzz, be aware that if you disclose your location, this information will be available to the whole world.

Google also offers speech search: No typing is involved at all, you simply say your query. This works in English, but not in, say, French or Norwegian. In English, it works like a charm, though, even for complex queries.

Taptu

Taptu is not as advanced as Google, but in most cases, it will provide just what you need. This is a service that is tailored specifically for touch screens and it does a great job at simplifying web search on touch phones.

The front page conveniently offers links to hot search terms. There are also quick links to images and buzz search.

The results are easy to access. Along with regular web pages, they include images,videos, news, blogs and more, depending on query. And in stead of clicking through to the web site and wait for it to load, only to discover it was not what you were looking for, you can choose a preview which loads quickly and includes a thumbnail of the web site as well as an excerpt from the content.

The search results also include links to “the touch friendly web”, web sites that fit your query and are optimized for small screens. What a great idea!

On the downside, Taptu offers no local options, and there are a couple of quite prominent Google ads in the search results — but this is still a great product.

Yahoo! Mobile

Yahoo! Mobile offers much of the tools Google Mobile does (there is no speech search, though). In addition, there is a list of hot topics on the front page and easy access to turn on and off safe search.

You get search suggestons as you type. At the bottom of the web search result, you get links to other relevant hits in categories like news, images and answers.

It is easy to set your location by GPS and Yahoo will suggests restaurants, movie theatres and more. I couldn’t test this, though, because it doesn’t work in Norway.

Bing Mobile

Bing Mobile has a smart design which makes searching easy: There are quick links to directions, maps, weather and movies on the front page. The search results are not universal (like Google and Taptu), but tabs provide easy access to results in the categories videos, images and news.

You can set your location, but not by GPS. Bing doesn’t attempt to find local businesses in Oslo.
A handy tool lets me save several locations (home, work, other) which I can toggle between.

Ask Mobile

I am generally a big fan of Ask, but Ask Mobile is not too impressive. The front page has convenient quick links to web, images, news, local and maps & directions. The search results are easy to navigate. Ask presents universal search results, but in strange categories. My search for pizza retrieved results in these categories: news, images, questions, ringtones (!). Pizza ringtones?

There is a local search option which might be excellent, but it doesn’t work in Norway.

Padia Powersearch has links more mobile search sites.

photo credit: Dushaun

SMX West: March 2-4
Go to California!

Outsource SEO/PPC
$11 - $15 per hour