Yahoo! to 'revolutionise' mobile search with OneSearch

Yahoo! announced upgrades to its Yahoo! OneSearch product at the CTIA trade show in Las Vegas yesterday, which it says make mobile search smarter, more relevant and easier to use with voice-activation technology.

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Marco Boerries, the company's executive vice president of 'connected life', introduced the new Yahoo! OneSearch 2.0 during a keynote address, promising "instant answers to any query, not just web links". This means search results will expand from traditional hyperlinks into other media - a search for "New York" could yield subway timetables, for example, or a search for local restaurants could bring up ratings and reviews along with one-click reservations. And searching the name of a friend could provide links to the social-networking sites the friend uses.

Yahoo! is leveraging technology that it has used in a project for its PC-based search tool called 'Search Monkey', which consists of a set of open source tools that allow users and publishers to annotate and enhance search results associated with specific websites. The two applications share the same APIs and Boerries said he expects some 1,000 publishers to work with them to help make search more relevant.

Also central to OneSearch is voice-enabled technology. A release from Yahoo! said: "Consumers can search for anything, including flight numbers, locations, website names, local restaurants and more, by simply speaking." The voice-activation software is now available for download on a number of RIM's BlackBerry devices, and Yahoo! has said over the next few months it will be compatible with more handsets.

Yahoo! is using voice-activation technology from Vlingo, which announced yesterday that Yahoo! is the lead investor in a $20m Series B funding round. As part of that investment deal, Yahoo! has exclusive rights to the technology.

Boerries said during a press conference: "We liked the technology so much that we invested in the company. But we made sure that our competitors can't use it."

Boerries also said Yahoo!'s voice-enabled search is different from Microsoft's more limited voice-enabled search because Yahoo!'s service allows people to find results no matter how they say a term or phrase.

OneSearch also includes a download called Search Assist, which encompasses recommended search results, predictive typing technology to speed up the amount of time it takes to enter a query - a key feature for small mobile keypads. Currently, this is only available for Apple's iPhone.

OneSearch 2.0 is Yahoo!'s latest attempt to stay ahead of rival Google in the mobile market. At the GSMA Mobile World Congress in Barcelona earlier this year, the company unveiled its Yahoo! OneConnect mobile messaging and social-networking platform, which still has yet to debut publicly.

Boerries said in yesterday's keynote address: "With the launch of Yahoo! OneSearch in 2007, we revolutionised mobile search by recreating search specifically for the mobile phone. With Yahoo OneSearch 2.0, we are fundamentally changing the way consumers use the internet on their mobile phones."

Original article: At CTIA, Yahoo unveils a smarter mobile search from CNET News.com