Mobile Blog Posts

With March Madness in full effect, the incessant score-checking is already underway. Yahoo! Mobile is making it a little easier to use search to keep up with your favorite teams.

Now that you've got your bracket filled out and your old college T-shirt freshly pressed, it's go time. Will Western Kentucky be this year's George Mason upset, or will they go the way of past Cinderella hopefuls and get sent packing after the second round? We obviously can't predict the future, but we can give the men's college basketball scores on your mobile phone using Yahoo! oneSearch. Simply go to m.yahoo.com on your mobile phone browser and search for 'ncaa' or the name of your college team of choice. You'll get the top scores per region from all your favorite teams on your mobile phone, so you can stay a step ahead of fellow fans with your quick knowledge of who made an early exit.

And when you're not in full March Madness mode, the Yahoo! Mobile team has brought another favorite pastime to your mobile phone.

For iPhone users, you can now watch streaming movie trailers directly from oneSearch by going to m.yahoo.com and searching for 'movies' or a movie name. When you click on the movie image in the search results page, you'll be able to view the movie trailer streamed in QuickTime format and optimized for your iPhone. So if you're trying to plan out your weekend, or you're bored on the train, check out the top box office trailers like "Dr. Seuss' Horton Hears a Who" or "10,000 B.C." through oneSearch. Simply click on the movie image and you'll be directed to the trailer. You can also find showtimes near you and buy tickets for select theaters from the movie menu.

Joy Ghanekar
Yahoo! Mobile

Today we're integrating Yahoo! Answers content into our mobile search service, oneSearch, and launching it globally in 18+ countries.

We're rolling this out today to Argentina, Australia, Brazil, Canada, France, Germany, India, Indonesia, Italy, Malaysia, Mexico, the Philippines, Singapore, Spain, Thailand, the United Kingdom, the United States, and Vietnam.

Yahoo! oneSearch and Yahoo! Answers both offer platforms for searching -- oneSearch with instant results to your queries from your mobile phone and Answers with the content of 350 million answers from over 95 million users worldwide. We wanted to integrate these two methods of searching because we know that sometimes you need to tap people who are "in the know" when you're trying to find a quick answer on the go.

Starting today, when you use oneSearch to conduct queries for advice or reference topics, the search results you'll receive will include relevant answers from other Yahoo! Answers users all over the world, as well as the usual news headlines, images, business listings, etc. When you search for opinions or recommendations from others, such as 'What is the best apartment dog?,' you'll see a cluster of Yahoo! Answers results. And for factual queries like '2008 Summer Olympics,' your oneSearch results will show content from Wikipedia as well to give you a little something extra to chew on.

The oneSearch team also rolled out flight information search today, so flight status, times, gates, etc. are all accessible from your mobile phone. Here's how it works: If you search 'United Airlines 90' or 'UA 90' (or any other airline and flight) through oneSearch, you're presented with a quick snapshot of the flight information. You can try it out here or text the query to 92466 (spells YAHOO) and we'll return a text message with the same information.

Ultimately, oneSearch's goal is to get you instant answers from a variety of sources and Yahoo! properties so you have the right information when you're mobile. By adding sources like Yahoo! Answers, Wikipedia and flight info, we'll be able to help users find opinions, suggestions and facts quickly and on the go.

Enjoy!

Lawrence Kim
Yahoo! Search

I went to a wedding in Marquette, Michigan a couple of weekends ago. The weather? A beautiful 85 degrees Fahrenheit. The weekend-long celebration? Actually, pretty fun. My date? Yahoo! oneSearch. Yes, Yahoo! oneSearch and I were quite the pair. I color-coordinated my tie and dress shirt with oneSearch's dress, in my best Casanova move I dipped oneSearch on the dance floor at the reception and oneSearch and I sipped champagne as we toasted the newly weds on their happy nuptials.

Well... no, I didn't really go to the wedding with Yahoo! oneSearch as my date. I had my good friend Vickie by my side. But I couldn't have enjoyed the weekend quite as much without my mobile device and Yahoo! oneSearch with me in tow.

Like most wedding weekends that have a number of activities leading up to the big day, I had some downtime in between the rehearsal dinner, cocktail party and ceremony. While I wasn't catching up with Vickie, drinking wine or prepping for the ceremony, I played around with Yahoo! oneSearch and decided I was going to keep track of how many times I used the service during the weekend, just for kicks.

It was more than I realized.

In a random debate with my fellow wedding-goers, I used Yahoo! oneSearch to prove to them that the pasties I was talking about were not the body-decor they were thinking of. A quick image search for 'pasties Michigan' on Yahoo! oneSearch proved my understanding of them and got me out of trouble with Vickie. Phew.

When Vickie was at the wedding rehearsal, I even found show times for The Simpson's Movie and was able to sneak away for a couple of hours to catch the hilarious flick with some of my friends. Shhh, don't tell!

And, perhaps my most practical use of Yahoo! oneSearch was when we were presented with a wine opener dilemma just hours before the wedding banquet. We needed to find some extra ones quickly and get back to the reception in time, so I found a nearby Wal-Mart and saved the day with the necessary vino reinforcements.

After putting it to the test that weekend, I found Yahoo! oneSearch to be easy and helpful for my day-to-day mobile search needs, especially when I needed accurate local information quickly. Recently, our team made some tuning with the local intent of user queries and now the service is more likely to have local search results on the top of the results page. So when you too are presented with a corkage dilemma, you can course-correct just as quickly and efficiently. Check out this search for Yellow Cab in the Mountain View, CA area.

Let us know what your experience has been with one of your weekends and Yahoo! oneSearch. We're interested in hearing how you found it useful and even some ideas for making it a better resource for you on the go. Drop us a note in the comments below.

Paul Yiu
Yahoo! Search

As you may have heard already, this week our Connected Life team has taken Go for Mobile 2.0 GA in the US and further expanded Yahoo! oneSearch into Asia with six new carrier partnerships.

Now ready for primetime, the new version of Yahoo! Go 2.0 and the access to localized beta versions in 13 countries will be available today, expanding to more than 200 different mobile phones in the U.S. by the end of July and more than 400 by end of year. Helping to broaden the adoption of the mobile Internet, the team has included a few new enhancements in this version, including increased speed, better e-mail, more powerful maps, easier navigation and better mobile search results.

Further expanding the mobile search experience is the recent development coming out of Yahoo! oneSearch this week. Yahoo! has now signed partnership agreements with six major mobile operators across Asia to distribute oneSearch, reaching nearly 100 million new subscribers. Since its beta launch in January and Asia launch in May, we've listened to all the great feedback from our users and have constantly worked to improve performance, make navigation easier and increase local relevance -- all with the goal of giving consumers better search results and instant answers.

Dave Ko, VP and GM of Yahoo!'s Connected Life division in Asia, just announced these partnerships and the rollout of the new version of Go 2.0 at CommunicAsia 2007 in Singapore. You can take a look at his conference recap and the details of the recent oneSearch expansion here.

Paul Yiu
Yahoo! Search

Yahoo! is expanding its mobile reach to a few more countries. We just launched Yahoo! oneSearch Beta in India, Indonesia, Malaysia, Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, and Vietnam. We're now in 14 countries, including the United Kingdom, France, Germany, Spain, Italy, Canada (launched on 5/3) and the U.S.

Users in these countries can now access News, Finance, Weather, Web, Mobile Web, Flickr, and Image search results on their mobile devices. And, for UK and Canada users, local search results are a part of the oneSearch experience. Accessing all of this information is easy for folks across a number of geographic locations. Folks in the UK, for example, can now look for curry in the West End, while travelers in India can find the temperature in Jaipur. Quick news headlines in Singapore are also just a click away.


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Paul Yiu
Yahoo! Search

I've always had success finding the information I was looking for on the Web. The challenging part was finding a way to bring this information with me once I left my computer. It usually involved scrounging for a piece of paper, jotting down my addresses, directions or whatever I was searching for and just hoping not to lose it.

Working with the mobile team, I realized that a lot of our users experience the same pain. With this in mind, we've enabled a new way for popular searches (e.g., local info, weather, stock quotes, sports scores and movies in theaters) to be easily sent to a mobile phone.

When you're on the move and have a limited amount of time, it's important to get all the information you need in a single search. oneSearch gets you all this information on your mobile phone because it understands the type of search you're doing and optimizes the results accordingly.

On the Yahoo! Search results page, simply click on the link right below the Yahoo! Shortcut and enter the mobile phone number. You'll then immediately receive a text message with a link to the results.

You can also navigate the search box directly via your mobile phone or SMS -- a capability we've had for local and driving directions since 2005. Simply launch your web browser on your cell and type in http://m.yahoo.com. Or, if you want search results via your SMS, simply send a text message to YAHOO (92466) and type in search shortcuts in the message. We'll then send you the results back via SMS message.

We hope you find this handy. Give it a try and let us know what you think in the comments section.

Christina Lee
Yahoo! Search

My phone is more like a body part than it is a device - it's with me everywhere I go. And now, with easy accessibility to the Internet, it's more like a go-go-gadget-arm. Finding a phone number to a restaurant, a quick check on my favorite game scores or movie show times on my phone makes it that much more indispensable.

I work with the Yahoo! Mobile group and back in January we announced that our new Yahoo! oneSearch service would be available on Yahoo! Go for Mobile 2.0. Today we announced that Yahoo! oneSearch is available on more than 85% of phones, providing greater access to the mobile web. The service is designed to give mobile searchers answers to their queries, not just a list of links. It's about making search on your mobile device as quick and as easy as possible, by providing relevant results right on the page.

Try it out for yourself. Search for a company like "Apple" and check out, not only the great search results, but the really incredible amount of information you get if you click on the stock quote. Or, if you're hungry, search for "pizza" and check out the user ratings for local pizza places, or grab the phone number to place your order.

Find out how to take full advantage of the service here or take a look at the screencast on Richard MacManus' blog. Best of all, send your search query via SMS to 92466 (which spells "yahoo").

We hope you'll find it useful!

Lee Ott, Product Manager
Yahoo! Mobile