Searching the web from your cell phone seems to be on the rise. According to the Kelsey Group, 33.6% of those surveyed said that they use their phones to get movie listings and research products, a 9.2% increase from the previous year. While only 18.9% say that they currently own cell phones, 49.2% say that they are planning to buy one within two years. “We are seeing a qualitative difference in consumer usage of mobile phones,” said Kelsey Research Director Steve Marshall to tech blog WebProNews. “The aggressive projections about mobile are approaching reality, as smartphones are now becoming mainstream platforms for commercial usage.”

Delver, the search engine known for making web searching a social experience, has announced a content partnership with Yahoo. Under the terms of the deal, search results derived from Yahoo BOSS will be integrated into Delver’s existing results. “Leveraging Yahoo Search BOSS allows us to keep focusing on social-graph ranking and indexing,” said Delver Chief Executive Liad Agmon in a prepared statement. “[The deal provides] our users with a solution that intelligently mixes social results with traditional Web results.”

Elsewhere, Google has launched a series of short videos and blog posts designed to help people get the most out of AdSense. In the debut episode, the AdSense team discusses advertising size. According to them, there is one thing that you must do when creating an advertisement — make it big. “Publishers often ask us what the best ad sizes are to include in their site’s design,” writes team member Mel Ann Chan. “If you position your ad units well, users will be more likely to see these ad formats and find an ad that they’re interested in.” Expect more helpful hints such as this in the near future.

In other news, groups are coming to Twitter … in a way. Twitter Japan, along with their partner Digital Garage, has officially launched Twicco, a new site dedicated to groups and the people who frequent them. Aside from the affiliation, the basic group structure is similar to what you will find elsewhere on the web. Twicco groups are available now in Japan. Both Twitter Japan and Digital Garage are promising a “wider roll out” of the service in the near future.

Finally: Internet surveyors Netcraft have finished counting the numbers of active sites on the web. According to the firm, there are 182,226,259 sites, up nearly 948,000 from July. Netcraft is also reporting that Apache is the server software of choice for the majority of active sites, with Microsoft’s IIS server technology coming in a distant second. Apache has been on top of the web server food chain since July 1996.