AOL’s surprisingly great search utility for iPhone and iPod touch

Whoa, we didn’t see this one coming. Sphere, software that connects contextually relevant content to your content, has been acquired by AOL for a rumored $25 million. Sphere was originally a search engine for finding content on blogs but then morphed into an engine to discover contextually related content with clients like the Time, Reuters, Wall Street Journal, and many others. AOL has taken this new technology and created a very nice search utility specifically tailored for the iPhone and iPod touch. The interface blends the iPhone’s mulit-touch surface with AJAX to deliver a user experience that allows the richness of the web to shine on mobile Safari. This new search tool has features you won’t find in Google or any of the major search engines. If you’re tired of Google or just want to check out a new way to find good stuff on the web using your iPhone, then check out this surprisingly great search utility from AOL. Who’da thunk? Learn more after the jump.

One of the nicest features of AOL’s iPhone search is location based searching. You enter your location into the app the first time you use it, then search results will be sorted for you based on where you are. This is great for mobile users and the only downside is that you have to re-enter your location if you travel. It would be really great if the app detected your location for you anytime you use it.

The search results integrate content from AOL’s City Guide which provides hotels, restaurants, and other city listings along with maps and driving directions powered by MapQuest. You can also tap in the title of a movie to get a list of nearby theaters and showing times along with maps and phone numbers for each theater.

The related content is where this app really stands out. Let’s say you search for a movie title. The first set of results you will see is a list of nearby theaters playing that movie, along with maps, phone numbers, etc. However, you can also find related content to your movie title such as mobile web sites about that movie, images, news, and of course, search results from the greater web. All this related content is always just a tap away and makes it very easy for iPhone and iPod touch users to navigate search results to find relevant information.

Another great feature of AOL Mobile Search is that it will always automatically give you mobile specific sites at the top of the search results. For instance, you want to get to the mobile version of Facebook but cannot recall the URL. A search for “facebook” will yield the mobile version of Facebook as the top result instead of the Facebook home page like other search engines would display. This makes it even simpler to navigate the web since you’ll always be going to web sites that are optimized for the mobile experience.

Check it out at the link below and if you like it, be sure to create a web clip bookmark for your home screen so mobile search is only a tap away.

AOL Mobile Search
search.aol.com

 

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