Category Archives: Yahoo! Search Mobile

Confirmed: Yahoo! OneSearch Comes to T-Mobile USA

I blogged last month about the mobile search deal that was being tied up between T-Mobile USA and Yahoo!. It has officially been announced today.

T-Mobile USA has launched a new mobile portal called web2go, that has a Yahoo! OneSearch searchbox right at the top of the page, according to a screenshot from Venture Beat.

In addition to that, some cell phones that T-Mobile will launch from now will have a shortcut button to Yahoo, except of course Google’s G1.

Users will then be more tempted to visit off-deck sites and mobile site (or regular site) owners should see an increase in their traffic from Yahoo! OneSearch if they’re properly indexed there.

Google will still remain a partner according to T-Mobile.

I wondered if Medio would remain present on T-Mobile’s deck and it seems to be the case, Medio will still provide mobile content search results (games, news, ringtones, etc). Yahoo OneSearch is capable of indexing and ranking mobile content but I guess Medio still has the contract for that type of service.

Yahoo! to Become T-Mobile USA’s default Mobile Search Engine

Google may have teamed up with T-Mobile to launch the G1, but I heard from someone close to the matter that Yahoo! will soon be the default mobile search engine on T-Mobile USA’s mobile web portal. All phones launching from November 8th will have a shortcut button to Yahoo! OneSearch, except obviously Google G1 and the new Sidekick.

Yahoo! OneSearch will allow T-Mobile USA customers to search for on-portal content such as games, ringtones, news, etc but also off-portal content.

Medio is currently T-Mobile USA’s mobile search provider but I don’t know if it will still remain present on its deck, I should have more details on that soon.

Yahoo! was already T-Mobile partner for mobile search in Europe, with T-Mobile USA it will have the potential to directly reach 30 million subscribers.

Yahoo! Mobile Search: Potential To Reach 600 Million Users

Yahoo announced on Tuesday that its mobile search service will be offered by six more telecom companies in Asia. It has reached 60 partnerships so far which represents a potential user base of 600 million subscribers. (Source: Reuters)

Considering that over 3.3 billion people in the world own a mobile phone (in 2007), that means that Yahoo! has the immediate potential to reach almost 20% of the world’s mobile users.

Yahoo and AT&T Sign Mobile Advertising Deal

Yahoo! announced today that it is partnering with AT&T to provide mobile ads to AT&T’s 70 million mobile customers. According to Reuters:

A Yahoo executive said in a phone interview the new deal brings its services to up to 70 million AT&T mobile customers. Yahoo will provide Web search on the customer portal for AT&T Mobility customers and deliver ads to AT&T customers who use the Internet on their mobile phones, he said.

“We are actually gaining more subscribers; we are going to gain more search traffic,” said Marco Boerries, executive vice president of Yahoo’s Connected Life division, who oversees the Internet media company’s broadband and mobile phone business.

AT&T’s Mobile Internet portal, MEdiaNet, is currently using Infospace/Motricity for on-portal search, and JumpTap for off-portal search. But it’s not clear if Yahoo! will replace them or just come on top of these existing search services.

Yahoo! proves again that they want to grab the biggest share of the mobile search advertising industry, and they are counting on strong partnerships such as the one with US’ biggest cell phone company to achieve their goal.

Yahoo! Signs Mobile Search Partnership With America Movil

Yahoo! announced today that it is partnering with America Movil, the largest mobile network operator in Latin America, to offer mobile web and mobile search services on its portals.

This is the largest mobile search partnership that Yahoo! has obtained since the launch of OneSearch, its new mobile search engine. With this deal, Yahoo! clearly proves itself as a strong player in the mobile search market. Google’s strategy is about focusing on its services and new mobile OS Android, but Yahoo! prefers to sign deals with large operators to gain market share in this area.

Yahoo’s OneSearch will be present on America Movil’s portals in 16 different countries across Latin America and the Caribbean, which represent more than 140 million wireless customers.

OneSearch will allow people to search for off-deck content and information, but also on-deck content such as ringtones, games, videos etc according to Greg Sterling who received this information from Yahoo!:

Yahoo will work with each AMX affiliate (regional carrier) to determine the advertising model that best supports their efforts. Yahoo will be integrating their “consumables” content (aka ringtones, wall papers etc), as well as tailoring the mobile search experience to best suit consumers in the individual countries.

That means that Yahoo will control all kind of searches made bu America Movil’s customers, and be able to monetize on-deck and off-deck searches with sponsored lists. This will be a real benefit for advertisers willing to reach more mobile users in these areas of the world (140 million potential customers!).

Yahoo! Signs More Mobile Search Partnerships In Asia

Yesterday, Google released Android SDK. Today, Yahoo! announces that it has signed a deal with nine operators in Asia to provide oneSearch to their mobile internet portals and also mobile advertising solutions. The race to beat Google is on.
The new partnership agreements include the following carriers:

Aircel Limited (India), BPL Mobile (India), Bharat Sanchar Nigam Ltd. (BSNL; India), DiGi Telecommunications Sdn Bhd (DiGi; Malaysia), PT EXCELCOMINDO PRATAMA Tbk. (Excelcom; Indonesia), PT Hutchison CP Telecom (Hutch 3; Indonesia), PT Indosat, Tbk (Indosat; Indonesia), PCCW Mobile HK Limited (Hong Kong) and Starhub Ltd (Singapore).

Last month, I announced on this blog that I’ve heard that an Asian carrier had signed a deal with Yahoo! (DiGi and Malaysia), and I had some information on the nature of the deal, which will include Yahoo’s Mobile Media Directory, a mobile content search engine.

With these partnerships, Yahoo! will clearly keep a step ahead of the competition in this area of the world.

Source: Yahoo Press Room. via Techmeme.

Yahoo! To Announce More Carrier Partnerships

I recently reported that Yahoo! will soon launch its OneSearch search engine on an Asian mobile carrier’s portal. Now, Reuters reports that Yahoo! has actually signed more deals with other mobile carriers in South Asia:

The U.S. Internet giant has been in talks with operators in Taiwan, South Korea, Hong Kong and Malaysia — countries that boast some of the region’s highest mobile penetration rates — for new tie-ups for its mobile services, President Susan Decker said at an event in Taipei.

“We will have a number of announcements in the months ahead, even days and weeks,” Decker said at a news conference during a trip to Asia.

Yahoo’s combined user base in Taiwan, Hong Kong, South Korea, Australia and New Zealand, five of its key Asia Pacific markets, totals about 25 million users, said Rose Tsou, senior vice president of Asia region.

In June, Yahoo said it had signed six agreements with Asian mobile operators, including LG Telecom in South Korea, Maxis Communications Berhad in Malaysia and Taiwan Mobile.

The article doesn’t mention the nature of the agreements, so let’s be patient to get more details. With these announcements, Yahoo! clearly proves that they are serious about mobile search and have nothing to fear from white label mobile search engines or Google.

Mobile Search Kinda Sucks – But Does Anyone Care?

Peggy Anne Salz wrote a post at MSearchGroove where she discusses about the findings of a mobile search study made my Informa.

The goal of the study was to evaluate the relevance of Mobile/WAP results returned by search engines such as Google and Yahoo! on UK mobile carriers’s portals.

The study reveals that Mobile and WAP sites were hard to find in these search engines’s results, and that their relevance was often very poor:

  • Google and Yahoo off-portal Fixed Internet results were spot-on in terms of relevance. (After all, Internet search is what they were designed to do and that legacy makes it patently difficult to switch gears and excel in mobile from day one. As one content aggregator put it: “Google and Yahoo: They talk mobile but think Web.”)
  • Off-portal WAP results were a no-show and poor at best. From the findings: “Results were consistently off-topic, often absurdly so.”

It’s true that operators and/or search engines often tend to want to display traditionnal search results first, rather than mobile search ones.

According to Peggy, Informa informed operators about these issues regarding mobile sites results and it seems like they were unaware of that or really don’t care.

The operators claimed to be unaware of the problems; even more shocking is their indifference.A Vodafone spokesman said: “We’re offering the Internet on your mobile, and from the web results you highlight, we are satisfied that users are getting the information they want.” Translated: delivering fixed Internet content via mobile is the priority; WAP isn’t.

Yep, Vodafone have been saying the same thing since since the launch of their new Vodafone live! portal in the UK: they want to allow their users to replicate on their mobile devices what they can do on a computer. Pretty easy to do, right? Nope, even if handsets are getting better, you still cannot have the same Web experience on your small screen than on your PC.

That’s why there’s still a growing need for mobile specific sites, allowing a better user experience. But operators somehow tend to ignore that, and want to force people to view transcoded sites rather than made for mobile ones.

Peggy concludes her post by saying that no one really talks about the core issue: the state of mobile web. Does it even exist? Should there be a desktop Web, and a mobile Web, with sites designed for handset devices? Or does the mobile Web just consist of transcoded websites?

I personnally that we should have both. If I want to check out the New York Times website while on the go, then a transcoded version is fine. However, if I want to book a hotel room from my mobile phone, I would strongly prefer to have a site designed for mobile devices.

It’s true that there is an obvious lack of real standards for the mobile web, so all actors in this industry: operators, the W3C, mobile developers, mobile startups etc must make an effort to create them and educate site owners. Otherwise, I really don’t see how to trully improve the web experience of people using mobile devices.