SUNNYVALE, Calif.-Yahoo! added to its mobile search offerings Thursday, launching a short message service-based service and extending services for its mobile Web search service.
Like other SMS search offerings, Yahoo! delivers business names, addresses and phone numbers to users who send queries with location information to short codes. Yahoo! is integrating the new service with its Web-based service by providing links with the results, allowing users to get more information on specific searches.
The company also extended its mobile Web-based service to include some WAP 2.0-enabled phones. Yahoo! Search on Mobile previously was available only on HTML-enabled handsets.
Several SMS-based search services have come to market during the past year, with Google, 4INFO and Ask Jeeves among those companies that offer localized information to mobile users via text messaging. Slowly, it seems, wireless subscribers are beginning to use such offerings.
“Yahoo!’s search services and shortcuts on mobile devices let consumers get the information they need-from finding the latest weather forecast, to updated stock quotes, to tracking down a good place to have lunch-from wherever they are,” said Doug Garland, senior vice president of Yahoo! Mobile.
