<src=”/wp-content/uploads/2015/01/naver-revamp-mobile-search.jpg” />As we previously discussed in November 2014, Naver had recently revamped its mobile search design. On 7 January 2015, Naver launched some additional new features to further improve the user interface on its mobile search. The major change involves the fact that instead of simply having images beside the text, there is now a stream of pictures that users can scroll horizontally through under the specific search result, providing that these are the pictures that actually occur within the blog website or café website.

Naver also serves its users a carousel of videos now, as shown below, thereby allowing users to click directly on the icons when conducting mobile search.

Under the Q&A section of the Naver mobile search results, the new design presents the answers as well as the questions. In the past, users would need to click on the links (i.e. the questions), in order to see the answers.

Whilst paid advertisements usually appear in the ‘Power link section’ at the top of Naver’s mobile search results, it has recently been noticed that with certain keywords, these paid advertisements now appear at the bottom of the results. Instead, many of Naver’s blog sites or Naver café websites, along with complementary images, feature at the top of the results pages. It remains to be seen what sorts of keywords trigger this phenomenon, and whether they are all closely intertwined with the theme of these blog or café websites. Inevitably, though, it seems as though this revamping of Naver’s mobile search structure renders such blog or café websites more attractive to users, thereby making it more likely that they will click on the particular blog or café site.

Another new feature in the offing, which is currently being beta-tested, is a feature called ‘Power contents’ which would allow individuals to write paid posts on the Naver blog, thereby causing their posts to appear at the top of mobile search results.

Overall, mobile usage has sky-rocketed in Korea, in recent years, and mobile searches on Naver are quickly overtaking Naver’s desktop searches. Thus, Naver is putting an increasing amount of emphasis on optimizing its mobile interface, focusing particularly on improving the visual content offered to searchers.