Yahoo has rolled out a new mobile search service that lets users in US send short text message queries and retrieve results from their mobile phones.

    BEIJING, July 8 -- Yahoo has rolled out a new mobile search service that lets users in US send short text message queries and retrieve results from their mobile phones.

    The new service, called SMS Short Message Service) Search, is designed to let people get specific information, such as weather, stock quotes and business addresses, and use shortcuts on the keypad to take less time for users to input their queries.

    For example, typing in "w" and the ZIP code will retrieve a short weather forecast, Yahoo said. The tool was announced Thursday.

    If the information sought is not included in the first set of results, users can request and receive additional input. People also can save the responses and reply to them repeatedly over time to get updates of the same information, such as stock quotes for a particular company.

    In addition, Yahoo also said that it was expanding its Yahoo Search on Mobile, which was previously available only on advanced phones such as the Treo. Now any Wireless Application Protocol-enabled phone, which includes most mobile phones with a color screen, can do Web searches.    

    Last October, Google, the No. 1 Web search engine, launched its own service that let users use mobile phones or handheld devices to do Web searches using text messages, or short message service, which is also known as SMS.

    Unlike Google, however, once a user retrieves a reply from Yahoo's text message search service, they can refresh it without having to retype the query, said Thad White, who runs mobile services for Yahoo. That could be useful, he added, for retrieving the latest stock quote on a company. Enditem

(Agencies)