In early February 2010, Eric Schmidt who was the CEO of Google at the time, predicted the impending mobile-first phenomenon. Not long after that, Google announced that mobile searches on mobile exceeded desktop queries on a global basis.
However, there weren't any official statement affirmed by spokespeople. Google and Bing rarely update how and where their users are coming from.
For that reason, third-parties have gathered to get the numbers.
According to SEO and content performance marketing platform BrightEdge, 57 percent of traffic among its clients is coming from smartphones and tablets.
The percentage varies in some categories. Like for example, restaurant-related queries can be significantly higher. This goes the same for younger demographic segments where they prefer mobile over desktop computers.
BrightEdge also reported that mobile vs. desktop search queries produce different rankings almost 80 percent of the time.
The research also indicates that 79 percent of all keywords rank different on desktop compared to mobile, with 47 percent of those being keywords in positions 1-20.
A webpage of a particular website most likely to show up first in search results will be different 35 percent of the time, according to BrightEdge.
In a general agreement with BrightEdge, StatCounter reports that mobile traffic in the U.S. is at least 54 percent of total internet traffic.