If you could choose one banking term to dominate in Google searches, “mobile bank” would be near the top of your list. In the past two months, Google has served 1 million searches for the term (see chart above). And not surprisingly, 75% were conducted from mobile devices.

So who’s on the first page today? When searching “mobile bank” from my Seattle IP address I expected to see the usual mega-banks. And yes, they were there. Among organic results (see desktop screenshot below, mobile search results were similar), US Bank was #2, BofA was #3 & #4, PNC was #5 (despite no branch network in Washington state), Citizen’s Bank was #7 (also with no branches here) with Key Bank, Union Bank, and TCF finishing off the first page.

Nothing too surprising there, other than perhaps the omission of Chase and Wells, which evidently need to boost SEO efforts. But what did surprise me was who finished #1 AND #6, BankMobile from Customers Bank. Next year, the mobile bank is expected to be spun-off in a $110 million merger with Flagship Community Bank, which is wisely keeping the BankMobile name.

Bottom line: Thinking about it, I shouldn’t have been surprised by the results. BankMobile has 1.8 million mobile accounts, ranking it among the 10 largest U.S. mobile banks (after BofA, Chase, Wells, US Bank, Capital One, Discover, Amex and perhaps Barclays and/or TD Bank), I guess Google had it right after all. Enjoy your weekend!

Author: Jim Bruene (@netbanker) is Founder & Senior Advisor at Finovate as well as Principal of BUX Advisors, a financial services user-experience consultancy. 

Google search results for mobile bank (17 Nov 2017, Seattle IP address)