Yahoo follows Google with mobile search service
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Yahoo Inc. has followed Google into the mobile-search arena, launching a service that allows wireless users to query its search engine over their handsets.
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Human-powered search site morphs into search for mobile users.
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Google Inc. on Thursday announced a new test service that allows people to use mobile phones or handheld devices to tap Google&#39;s Web search via text messages, or short message service.
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Yahoo Inc. YHOO.O on Wednesday said   its mobile services is now available for download on phones   that use Microsoft Corp.'s MSFT.O Windows Mobile operating   system.
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(InfoWorld) - Yahoo Inc. ratcheted up its sponsored mobile search program on Wednesday, launching a beta test for all users of its mobile portal in the United States and United Kingdom. All mobile phone users with access to the Yahoo Mobile network will now see paid results when they search for certain terms. The full beta test follows limited trials in the two countries as well as a broader rollout in Japan, said Michael Bayle, senior director of monetization at Yahoo. The company plans to gradually expand the search terms involved. Both Yahoo and Google Inc. are working to expand their lucrative search advertising businesses to the still-emerging mobile Web. The challenges include creating a good user interface on a wide variety of phones and determining the value of a consumer's click on a mobile search result. But the rewards may be rich from the billions of cell phones in the world, said Greg Sterling, principal analyst at Sterling Market Intelligence, in Oakland, California. "It's just an enormous opportunity, and the needs of mobile users are more immediate in most cases than those on the Internet," Sterling said. In Japan, mobile search ads have commanded higher prices than those on the Web, Yahoo's Bayle said. Because of limited screen space and network speed, users generally won't see as many sponsored links on their phones as they do on the Web, according to Bayle. Yahoo may place one paid link at the top of the results list and sprinkle in a few more farther down, he said. But where it makes sense, such as when a user searches for "car rental," there may be more paid results, he added. The ads will behave differently, too, because many companies don't have a mobile Web page. Clicking on a link generally will take the user to a WAP (wireless application protocol) page created by either the vendor or Yahoo, Bayle said. That may be a full mobile commerce page or just one that gives a store location or a button to place a call to the merchant. The paid search results represent the first ads on Yahoo's mobile presence, which includes mail, messenger, news and other content, Bayle said. Analyst Sterling thinks it's likely to be the first step toward a wide variety of mobile Web advertising that includes banner ads, coupons and other elements. Google Inc. also is venturing into paid mobile search, he said. "It represents the mainstreaming of... advertising in the mobile environment," Sterling said. Consumers probably will respond well to mobile advertising as long as it's relevant to them and there isn't too much of it, he said.ADVERTISEMENTMAKE SOA REAL WITH IBM WEBSPHERE PODCASTStreamline processes and maximize efficiency within a proven service oriented architecture. Take back control of your business processes with IBM WebSphere.
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Yahoo launched a new service designed to let users of its search engine save and manage their query results for accessing later and sharing with others, the company said Tuesday.
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(InfoWorld) - Fast Search & TransferÂ and InfoSpaceÂ have expanded the scope of a years-long collaboration in mobile search, aiming to improve the technology they offer to carriers and end users. The companies have developed a hosted search service they will offer to carriers, which in turn can offer it under their own brand, Fast Search and InfoSpace announced Monday. In recent years, Fast Search and InfoSpace have provided mobile search engines to carriers -- individually and jointly -- but this new service represents a deeper partnership that goes beyond joint licensing and marketing. It involves ongoing research and development as the vendors seek to edge out competitors in mobile search functionality. They will focus on improvements to the search index, development of a mobile ad platform, expansion of their existing filtering and recommendation capabilities, and refinement of "zero term" search, in which content is pushed out to users based on their preferences and profiles and without requiring a keyword query, said Michael Brady, Fast Search's senior director of mobile business development. Since 2001, Fast Search has focused on the enterprise search market, but it is convinced consumer mobile search is worth pursuing because it is expected to grow significantly in users and advertising revenue in the coming years, Brady said. InfoSpace specializes in mobile content delivery and search. Industry analyst Iain Gillott of iGR said carriers feel more comfortable with "white-label" deals because they like to maintain as much control as possible over subscribers. Having GoogleÂ or YahooÂ pushing ads directly to their customers terrifies them, Gillott said. A big challenge mobile search providers will face is getting users comfortable with search on their cell phones. "Search isn't the first thing that jumps to mind when you open up your phone," Gillott said. Fast Search and InfoSpace will need to work with carriers to make their search engine visible and easily accessible on handsets, he said. The mobile search ad market is so small and new that Jupiter Research considered it almost nonexistent until the end of 2006, although the market research company plans to issue a forecast for it this year, analyst Julie Ask said. There is no clear market leader at this very early stage of the game. The main ad-related challenge for mobile search providers will be to gain a big enough audience for their inventories of ads, Ask said. Then comes the issue of relevance. "If I am online and type 'Bruce Springsteen' into Google, I receive 2.75 million listings. This is useless on a mobile device. They need to assume that I have intentions that are different on a mobile device than on my PC," Ask said. For example, if a user enters the name of a recording artist such as Springsteen, the mobile search engine should assume the user may be looking for ringtones, wallpaper photos, or concert tickets, Ask wrote.
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InfoWorld - Leading search companies Google and Yahoo didn't appear to have a presence at the CTIA Wireless I.T. & Entertainment conference in San Francisco this week, but their startup competitors and smaller rival AOL were all angling for influence over mobile search.
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Yahoo Inc  has displaced  Google  as preferred provider of Web services to mobile  operator T-Mobile  in northern and central Europe,  Yahoo and T-Mobile said on Tuesday.
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It joins the battle for mobile users with Google.
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Verizon Communications plans to work with Yahoo, the Internet search engine, to introduce a portal for its high-speed Internet service.
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Yahoo&#39;s new Mobile Internet service lets users obtain localized search results on specific businesses, access maps, and make calls from the results page.
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Yahoo hopes of enlisting partners for its new mobile search services.
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Google is experimenting with a new search service for mobile devices based on text messaging, also known as "short messaging service" (SMS), as the company reaches out to the wireless world.
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Yahoo for the first time is letting mobile phone users query its search engine, giving them access to conventional Web results, local business listings and related information, as well as images such as pictures and maps, the company says.
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SAN FRANCISCO -- Yahoo (Quote, Chart) expanded its search empire to the mobile arena with the launch of some additional services. The company was one of the original content providers for mobile devices running
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T-Mobile announced on Tuesday that it will soon begin using Yahoo as its preferred mobile search provider in Europe, ending the operator&#39;s existing relationship with Google for mobile search.The move was seen by many as a minor coup for Yahoo, which is competing with Google and Microsoft to win the loyalty of a growing number of mobile Internet users. Others noted that mobile search is in its infancy and said the field is still wide-open.When T-Mobile signed its original deal with Google, it made headlines as one of the earliest partnerships between a mobile operator and a search provider.&quot;Well done Yahoo for knocking Google off the Web n Walk home page,&quot; wrote John Delaney, an analyst for Ovum, commenting on the announcement. Web n Walk is T-Mobile&#39;s mobile Internet offering.Beginning in March, T-Mobile customers in 11 European countries will see Yahoo&#39;s mobile oneSearch by default on their phones. OneSearch is designed to make it easy for mobile users to get relevant search results and navigate through different categories within search results.The companies plan to offer other Yahoo services to T-Mobile customers, including Flickr, Messenger, Mail, Weather and Finance. Yahoo now counts 29 operators around the world as oneSearch customers.The deal appears to mark a strategy change at T-Mobile. When the operator launched Web n Walk, the service was designed to mimic the Web by minimizing T-Mobile branded services and prominently offering Google, Delaney said. Since then, it has evolved to add more T-Mobile services. It&#39;s not clear yet which strategy end-users prefer. &quot;The risk is that T-Mobile will discover that its users really preferred it when T-Mobile gave them access to the Web, and then got out of their way,&quot; Delaney said.While the T-Mobile/Yahoo deal is a blow to Google, the search giant had a significant mobile win of its own this week.&#160;Nokia announced on Tuesday that it will add Google search in addition to its own search offering on select phones. Nokia plans to extend the offering to more phones in the future.Nokia has begun offering an increasing number of services, such as location-based maps and social-networking services, which could compete with offerings from operators. &quot;Nokia is walking a bit of a fine line because they&#39;re definitely moving into what some consider carrier territory,&quot; said Mike Wolf, an analyst at ABI Research.So far, the market for branded search services on mobile phones like those from Yahoo and Google is still wide-open, he said. The search providers are increasingly interested in mobile because there is strong growth in mobile Internet usage, he said. The iPhone is contributing to that as a device that aims to make the mobile Internet as similar as possible to the PC-based Internet.Services from Yahoo and Google also compete with those that are branded by the operator. Companies like Medio specialize in offering technology to operators for branded search services. Operators in the U.S. have been more likely to use the self-branded option rather than partner with one of the online brands. AT&amp;T, however, is one notable exception -- it uses Yahoo&#39;s oneSearch.Success in the mobile Internet is important enough that Wolf believes that Yahoo&#39;s track record in the mobile market was a factor in Microsoft&#39;s decision to try to buy the search provider. &quot;Mobile is probably at least a consideration in the acquisition attempt,&quot; he said.