Internet search giant Google revealed this week that mobile search ad request volume doubled in late 2011 when compared to the same time frame in 2010.

In a new interview with Tech Crunch, Google’s mobile search ads chief Surojit Chatterjee admits that mobile search has increased five-fold in the past two two years alone.

Chatterjee says that quality of search ads is increasing thanks to some of the new factors being considered in mobile search ad rankings. For example, mobile web-optimized sites are now ranked higher. Since August 2011, Google has seen more than a 50 percent increase in the number of AdWords advertisers with a mobile optimized sites.

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According to prominent Wall Street analyst and leading tech market watcher Gene Munster with Piper Jaffray, Google’s mobile ad revenue may exceed $4 billion in 2012.

Munster says AdSense for mobile and the AdMob unit have been huge cash generators in the past and 2012 will be no different.

Unlike Apple, however, which continues to fall short of initially high expectations surrounding the iAd mobile ad service, Google’s mobile ad business has consistently grown – from $1 billion in 2010 to $2.5 billion in 2011.

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Google today announced new mobile ad-units along with some interesting new stats in regards to mobile search.

According to the company, 40% of all mobile searches coming to Google are local in nature at this point, which continues to trend upward.  As such, the search giant also announced that “physical location,” or the proximity of a local business to a user’s location will become a targeting variable when serving ads to mobile users.

We reported yesterday that Google is now on track to bank over $2.5B in mobile ad sales this year, and it looks like the company’s “Click-to-Call” ads are driving a large portion of this total.  Google’s Surojit Chatterjee said that Click-to-Call is now driving “millions of calls per week” globally for the company.

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It was announced today that Google will begin adding +1 buttons to their Web and mobile display ads in early October, adding user photos and recommendations to the ads themselves.  The buttons were recently added in the same way to Google search results.

On its “Inside AdWords” blog today, Google said that +1 buttons have been installed on over a million Websites across the Web with more than 4 billion daily impressions.  By adding the buttons to display ads across both the Web and mobile, advertisers have the ability to run social-enabled ad campaigns that work across millions of sites on over 40 countries around the world.  The new feature is being added to display ads by default, though users can opt-out manually via their AdWords account.

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Despite the insistent – but ultimately incorrect – predictions by some, it no longer appears that Google has given up on its social networking ambitions by any stretch of the imagination.

Called the Google+ project, the Internet search giant has raised the curtain on a beta version of a social networking platform that makes it possible for users to be more selective in their social networking.

Google+ is a hybrid social network that incorporates many familiar features, including connecting with friends and contacts, a stream of updates, live video chatting, mobile group messaging and photo sharing. And all of it is very Google with names for the apps like Circles, Huddle, Sparks and Hangouts.

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On Tuesday, Google rolled out the red carpet for an impressive slate of new enhancements to the web search experience.

Google says the tweaks are largely directed at making web search more effective, comprehensive, and exponentially faster.

Google accomplishes this, at least in part, by playing psychic. Sort of.

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AdMob is celebrating the one-year anniversary of its acquisition by Google, and is announcing some impressive statistics as a result.

In total, AdMob traffic has grown by over 3.5 times over the past year.  In April alone, the ad network was processing over 2.7 billion requests per day — up from just over 2 billion in January.  In addition, the company said there are now over 80,000 mobile Websites and apps in the AdMob network, up from over 50,000 in January.  Ad requests are coming from 11 total countries, the company said, which is up from just three a year ago.

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