AOL Launches New Mobile Search

topics

AOL Launches New Mobile Search

AOL may be losing points in a customer satisfaction survey for Internet portal usage released today by the ASCI, but it is still looking for gold in the emerging mobile Internet. Today, the company is releasing a revamped beta version of its mobile search service. The most salient feature is a keyword/tab combination that streamlines the amount of typing needed to get a search result. (Google apparently is also trying to work on a way of minimizing the amount of work a mobile user needs to do to search.) Search results will incorporate content sourced from other AOL online properties, for example MapQuest’s maps, local listings from CityGuide and movie times from Moviefone.

One of the other new services will be an integrated Click2Call feature, which allows users to tap/highlight phone numbers generated by a search and call them automatically. GigaOM points out that this feature will not only drive additional revenues for AOL but will “appease the carriers” since it will encourage more airtime usage—not to mention that it will probably be more convenient to users. There will also be ads embedded from Third Screen Media, which AOL bought earlier this year.

The only devices supported so far as those running Windows Mobile but other platforms will be integrated in future. Expect rivals who want to also stake a claim in the mobile search arena—including Google, Yahoo, Microsoft and others—to step up their search product releases in response.

Related Stories

Ingrid Lunden Aug 14, 2007 12:14 PM ET

Posted In: Search, Technologies / Formats

latest headlines

Jane Hammond

This is an interesting article. Viewing websites on mobile phones is a growing trend. And it is also interesting that the pace of this change is speeding up, as the UK phone mobile operator T-Mobile is expecting to double the number of its mobile internet customers by the end of 2007. Mobile phones that can view websites are the future. More than 70 percent of all phones now come with a web browser, and they are in the hands of 1.8 billion people worldwide. So it’s a massive market. But there is an issue to be addressed. More people are using laptops which have screens that are more rectangular than desktop PCs, so there’s a tendency these days for websites to be designed in a more ‘landscape’ format with horizontal navigations too. This is totally the opposite of what you need in order to view a website on a mobile phone. Here you need a vertical format. Luckily there's a company I know that can convert websites into a suitable format for mobile phones. They are very good and nice people to do business with too:
http://www.web2mobi.co.uk