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May 3, 2007

Now in beta, Yahoo’s OneSearch could change the way people search using mobile phones. Yahoo OneSearch is expanding into the U.K., Spain, Italy, Germany, France and Canada.

Overall, local search results are served based upon user location. If a user happens to be in San Francisco and that he's searching for just the word “pizza” (not “pizza san francisco”), you’ll still be served local results to your area based upon the location of the provider's tower you are connecting with.

Fly to Chicago and the same search would deliver pizza locations in the Chicago market. This expansion is important for Yahoo Search, but possibly even larger as it adds numerous new marketplaces to Yahoo’s mobile advertising services such as Pay-per-Call, Pay-per-Click (in sponsored mobile search results) and display advertising.

To try Yahoo OneSearch on your computer or to use it on your mobile phone, just go to m.yahoo.com.

In a mobile fashion of what could remind you a bit of the content-driven Ask.com Smart Answers, Yahoo OneSearch has the primary goal of bringing mobile searchers exactly what they want on their mobile device: instant answers.

The idea is to bring the most relevant and useful information to the mobile user in the most efficient time and space available, making the very best use of the small mobile browsers and judging the intent of the searcher.

The assumed desire of the searcher is the main criteria in deciding which Yahoo content is served first during the oneSearch mobile experience.

Yahoo OneSearch keeps track of current trends to deliver such targeted end results to the user, so a search for '300' would result in movie information while a search for ‘pizza’ would list local pizza stores automatically instead of just websites about pizza.

For example, if the mobile user wants to go see 300 at the movies, they just need to type the name of the movie into the search box.

Overall, the search results would first list the movie, including a user rating, local theaters the movie is playing at, news headlines related to the movie and so on and so forth.

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Source: Search Engine Journal