Yahoo Expands Mobile Onesearch Internationally
By James Quintana Pearce - Wed 02 May 2007 10:30 PM PST
Yahoo is expanding its mobile oneSearch beta offering into six more countries—the UK, Spain, Italy, Germany, France and Canada. The service is accessible via Yahoo’s mobile web page, and was launched in the US in March. OneSearch is optimized to give results local to the searcher, so while anybody can access the page it works best if they’re in a launch country. For example, British users will have access to content including: Local listings with phone number, distance and click to call facility; Ratings, News, Finance, Weather, Image, Flickr and Web results. Yahoo promises more content feeds in the coming months.
Peggy adds: Yahoo has the right mix of capabilities to make its mark with oneSearch, but it will be an uphill battle if today’s roll-out is an indication of its mobile search capabilites (I’m based in Germany and tested it). No doubt Yahoo will fine-tune the service, but right now it’s dangerously thin on local content. What’s more, it responds to many local search queries with an address and a phone number. Not a result that will set Yahoo apart from its rivals in Europe.
