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.

As a result of the mobile search surge, Google’s mobile ad revenues are similarly projected to double from approximately $2.5 billion in 2011 to $5.8 billion in 2012.

To read more from Chatterjee’s interview with Tech Crunch, click here.

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.

Google’s track record of 150 percent mobile ad growth won’t slow in the least this year, says Munster.

“On the advertising side, one source shows that Android is doing well as a percentage of mobile ad impressions on their network, which we believe makes sense since a greater portion of Android apps are free versus paid,” Munster observed.

Thanks in no small part to Google’s Android market share sitting at more than 50 percent, Munster said Android will soon become “biggest platform for mobile advertising both for Google and the industry.”

“Mobile now accounts for 10.1 percent of time spent with media, up from 5.4 percent in 2008, but only 0.9 percent of advertising dollars,” Munster concluded in his note to investors. “The shift to mobile will likely come at the expense of other over-indexed media like newspapers and magazines, but as we know from the shift to online advertising, the shift is likely to be slow and steady.”

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.

The new AdWords ranking variable that takes into account a user’s location is good news for local businesses and retailers as it aims to drive more relevant foot traffic at lower costs.  Local businesses will need to use Location Extensions to take advantage of the new location targeting, and the smartphone user will need to be opted-in to share their location for location proximity to kick in.  In addition, here’s a quick rundown of the new ad-units Google introduced today . . .

Custom Search Ads for apps: will appear when users search within apps for content. Search ads now can be integrated into apps, which wasn’t available previously

Click to Download ads: will direct users to download areas in Android Market or iTunes app store.

Mobile App Extensions: these ads can direct people to specific apps or pages within apps already on their phones. Here’s Google’s example: “If someone searches for sneakers on a mobile device, they might see an ad that takes them directly into a cool shopping app they’ve installed on their phone.” It’s not clear what happens if the app isn’t on the user’s phone already.

Circulars (not limited to mobile): these are more graphically rich ads that contain product images, pricing and deals/offers. Google says, “When someone clicks on a search or display ad (on desktop, mobile or tablet devices), they may see these engaging ads which contain photos of relevant products and special offers.”

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.

The idea is that a display ad becomes much more powerful when people can see which of their friends and contacts have chosen to endorse it.  On the Web, the +1 button and recommendations will appear at the bottom of display ads, then fade out until the viewer hovers over the ad.  On mobile, the +1 button will replace the existing “g” logo and recommendations will appear for several seconds before fading out.

The buttons placed on display ads will also work together with buttons on search results, search ads, and Websites — meaning a single +1 applies to the same content across the Web, no matter where it appears.  While the theory is solid, I’m not sure people will be “+1ing” ads as much as Google hopes.  Will you?

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.

According to Google, the concept of “social circles” is critical to the nature of scope of the new platform, as users can pick and choose which social networking content is shared with particular individuals within designated “circles.”

+Circles, Google says in one example, lets users share what matters most with the people who matter most, Google admitted in its announcement of the platform.

The project, according to the New York Post, has been internally code-named Emerald Sea, indicating Google will either sink or sail on the social tide.

“Not all relationships are created equal, the company acknowledges on its official blog. “So in life we share one thing with college buddies, another with parents, and almost nothing with our boss. The problem is that today’s online services turn friendship into fast food—wrapping everyone in “friend” paper—and sharing really suffers.”

For now, Google is only allowing a select few Google users to try out the service until all the bugs are worked out of the beta phase.

“We realize that today people are increasingly connecting with one another on the web. But the ways in which we connect online are limited and don’t mimic our real-life relationships. The Google+ project is our attempt to make online sharing even better. We aren’t trying to replace what’s currently available, we just want to introduce a new way to connect online with the people that matter to you,” said Vic Gundotra, senior vice president of social at Google.

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.

In a move that some say is largely making the web itself faster, Google is now pre-loading web pages in search results for users employing the Chrome browser or other browsers that have a special plug-in.

Dubbed Google Instant for Pages, Google is essentially aiming to predict what a user is going to click on, a process that Google claims can shave several seconds off the search process while boosting impressions during the user session.

Given that mobile search traffic has grown five-fold in the previous twenty-four months, it comes as no surprise that the Internet search giant is hunkering down and devoting enormous amounts of time and resources to bolster the search process in any way conceivable.

Google, however, didn’t restrict innovation to the mobile platform with its revelations on Tuesday. Desktop users have new Google-baked bells and whistles to play with too. Voice search, for example, has finally been given the green light by Google – not a bad move, especially since voice traffic has exploded six-fold in the past twelve months.

Prior to Tuesday’s announcement, voice search was limited by Google to Android mobile devices.

But perhaps the most dazzling – or at least intriguing – of improvements introduced this week by Google is Search by Image.

Let’s say, for example, you have an image, logo, or other visual entity that you can’t identify. Google’s new Search by Image functionality may be able to provide some answers. The new feature allows users drag and drop unknown images into the search box or upload a similarly mystifying picture and Google will swiftly take care of the rest – or at least try to.

Google says Search by Image will be available within the next few days.

To learn more about the latest sophisticated developments Google has unveiled, check out Google Inside Search.

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.

The area showing the most growth, however, is ad requests stemming from tablet devices, which is why the company is announcing several new ad-formats aimed specifically for tablets.  The new formats allow advertisers and publishers to serve full-screen interstitial ads built with HTML5 on smartphones and tablets.  These advertisements can include branded video, image gallery, and interactive formats.  The company said the ratio of mobile to tablet ad requests are now 5 to 1.

Google also announced that DoubleClick for Publishers is now integrated with AdMob, meaning third party ad-serving from DoubleClick is now available on the AdMob network, with support for rich media formats.  AdMob is facing heavy competition from similar ad networks, and while being part of Google obviously has its benefits, the network will have to step things up to compete going forward.

The internet search giant has unveiled an update to Google News that delivers a highly-localized mobile solution called “News near you.”

According to Google, News Near You brings to the forefront news relevant to the city you in which you live and the surrounding areas.

“Location-based news first became available in Google News in 2008,” says Navneet Singh, Product Manager at Google News, “and today there’s a local section for just about any city, state or country in the world with coverage from thousands of sources. We do local news a bit differently, analyzing every word in every story to understand what location the news is about and where the source is located.”

The new service, which is free, can be be accessed through the browser of your Android smartphone or iPhone.

If you haven’t visited Google News on your mobile device since the new feature went live, a pop-up will prompt you to share your location. If you agree to do so, news relevant to your location will begin populating a new section called “News near you” which will be added at the bottom of the homepage.

You can reorganize the sections later via the personalization page, Google says.

To read the full announcement of the new service on the official Google blog, click here.

By Google’s own admission, the +1 button is shorthand for “this is pretty cool” or “you should check this out.”

In a nutshell, by clicking +1, you are publicly giving something “your stamp of approval.” In the process, search becomes more social as your +1′s “can help friends, contacts, and others on the web find the best stuff when they search.”

Already likened to a veritable Facebook “like” button for Google search results, the Internet search giant is angling to drive greater user involvement with registered Google accounts in return for getting recommendations for the things that interest you, right when you want them, in your search results.

The next time you’re trying to remember that bed and breakfast your buddy was raving about, or find a great charity to support, a +1 could help you out. Just make sure you’re signed in to your Google Account.

At this time, however, it isn’t exactly clear if and how Google plans to integrate +1 into mobile search results, but given the ubiquitous explosion in Google mobile search, it’s a safe bet that mobile users won’t be denied this nifty new social search feature for long.

To better understand out how the +1 button works in application, check out the Google-issued video posted below.

Click here to view the embedded video.

According to the formal announcement of the integrated Google Voice experience, Sprint customers will, in fact, be able to tap all the well-known features and benefits of Google Voice “without the hassle and fees associated with porting their number.”

Sprint, which is the only carrier to currently offer this capability, will be available soon on all Sprint CDMA phones, including the forthcoming Nexus S 4G1, which comes preloaded with the Google Voice Android app.

“As part of our partnership with Google, our customers will appreciate having the easiest set-up experience of any wireless carrier for Google Voice across all of our CDMA phones, using their existing Sprint phone number,” said Kevin McGinnis, vice president-Product and Technology Development, Sprint. “It’s now easier than ever to truly live a mobile lifestyle with the ability to manage multiple devices through intelligent call routing and online controls using just one phone number – your existing Sprint number.”

Customers can sign up to be notified when the integrated Google Voice experience for Sprint phones arrives at www.google.com/voice/sprint.

“With this integration, we have made Google Voice simple to use with a Sprint phone,” said Dave Girouard, president at Google. “Sprint subscribers now have access to all the benefits of Google Voice behind their existing mobile number without the need for porting or, if they already have a Google Voice number, they can display that number from their Sprint phone without the need for a separate application.”