Mobile search is the next frontier for search giants and marketers. Consumers can look forward to better results and businesses are going to be able to better target them. According to Mashable’s Lauren Drell, Google and Bing are seeing several important trends in mobile search that businesses and marketers should note.

1. It’s growing. In 2010 smartphone data usage doubled.

2. It’s not that different from PC search. People don’t search for different things on mobile devices, they just do it at different times. Mobile search picks up during the evenings and on weekends.

3. Consumers search because they want to take action. According to Google, 15 percent of searches are related to “Consumer Electronics,” 29 percent to “Restaurants” and 16 percent to “Auto.” Marketers are finding they can access people when they’re out and about, which means ads can turn into local conversion.

4. Advertisers see the promise of mobile search. According to Bing, 70 percent of task completion happens within one hour on mobile sites meaning that if you search for a restaurant, you’ll likely eat at one within the hour, whereas search from a PC at home might not pan out into action until much later. This difference means mobile advertising is going to be increasingly important for advertisers.

5. More mobile search could mean higher ad rates. While mobile ads are cheap right now, that might change. Google says advertisers get an 11.5 percent increase in click-through rates when they run a mobile-specific campaign as opposed to a hybrid (mobile and desktop) campaign. Industry experts are predicting that mobile search volume will exceed that of PC search in a few years.

6. Mobile coupons could replace Groupons. Bing says more than half of iPhone users compare prices while they shop and the majority of them want to redeem mobile coupons. Since 39 percent of U.S. merchants plan to use mobile coupons, this space is going to grow exponentially.

Read more at Mashable ^[1].