Touchtip ♥’s Yahoo! Search for iPhone

With Google-this and Google-that all over the media, poor little Yahoo seems to get no love these days. So it’s no wonder that this iPhone utility from Yahoo barely blipped the radar in the blogosphere when it was released two weeks ago. Now, if this was a Google product, it would be all over the web and the shameless lovefest would still be assaulting our hearts and minds. Here at Touchtip we just wanna say “Yahoo, we still love ya.”

Whether you like Yahoo or not, there’s no denying that Yahooligans have tenacity. Like every other search company, Yahoo search continues to receive a relentless pummeling by Google. Yet, somehow they manage to swallow their pride to create an excellent search site that is optimized specifically for mobile Safari. They even took their time with this one, making no compromises, to deliver a very handy search tool with the bells and whistles baked right in. Perhaps Yahoo Search for iPhone will give you more reason to tack Yahoo onto your springboards.

Yahoo! Search for the iPhone is a web application so you don’t need to visit the App Store to use it. Simply type “search.yahoo.com/i” into the address field to see it in action. It seems odd to us to have the “i” in that URL to go to the iPhone version when they should just detect the device automatically.

One nice feature of Yahoo! Search for iPhone is the Search Assist that saves you endless tapping by automatically completing your search query before you are even done typing. This was brought over from the Yahoo! web search box but has a different look on the iPhone. As you type you will see a few suggestions appear below your search box and above the virtual keyboard. By default, this will display only three additional suggestions, but you can tap the Done button to reveal more choices. Search Assist is a time saver, but the best feature for us is the integration of SearchMonkey modules.

If you’re a regular Yahoo user and have SearchMonkey modules set up for your desktop browser, then you’ll be happy to know that these will follow you over to the iPhone, as long as you are signed into Yahoo. SearchMonkey is one of those really powerful, but mostly unknown features that more Yahoo users need take advantage of. The modules help you customize your search results with additional information of your choice.

For instance, the StumbleUpon module will include StumbleUpon features beneath each of your search results. There are many useful modules to choose from including Yelp, Flickr, Wikipedia, and many more. There is a list of all the modules on Yahoo!’s Search Gallery. Sign in, select your modules, and you’ll have them with you on your desktop or iPhone version of Yahoo! Search. Awesome.

Other useful features of this iPhone optimized search tool includes shortcuts for movie showtimes, weather, local results, breaking news, and Flickr photos.

Google has offered an iPhone version of its search page for longer than Yahoo, but in our opinion, it falls just short of Yahoo’s iPhone search tool. Google’s only advantage is that it is easier to get to because you simply tap in google.com and you’ll automatically be routed to the iPhone version. For Yahoo you must tap in search.yahoo.com/i. However, the add-on modules offered by Yahoo that allow us to tailor our search results is absolutely dee-lish! We love it on our iPhones and “we still ♥ Yahoo!”

UPDATE 9/5/2008
Ryan Grove, the developer of Yahoo Search for iPhone tells us that there are easier ways to access this search tool by tapping in ysearch.com, or search.yahoo.com. Both will take you to the iPhone version automatically. He also suggests creating a home screen icon by tapping the “+” sign on your iPhone or iPod touch when you are viewing the Yahoo Search for iPhone. That will put a Y! icon on your screen so that this search tool is always just a single tap away. Thanks Ryan!

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