This past week, The Today Show has been running its annual “Where in the World is Matt Lauer?” segment. Matt traveled to five different countries (including the U.S., which seems like cheating), but Yahoo’s got him beat: Yahoo oneSearch just went “live in beta” in six.
The UK, Canada, Germany, Italy, Spain, and France – these are the nations in which the service is now being offered. “[C]onsumers will be able to access content including local listings with phone number, distance and click to call facility as well as ratings, News, Finance, Weather, Image, Flickr and Web results,” claimed Yahoo in a statement.
I must say, that’s pretty impressive.
And Geraldine Wilson, vice president of Yahoo’s Connected Life Europe, agreed. (Press releases are not the best places to look for modesty.) “Yahoo! oneSearch is designed specifically for the mobile phone and understands what users are looking for on the move,” she said. “Yahoo! oneSearch delivers relevant results with just one search, instead of a sea of Web links to PC sites.”
Yet I’d wager that oneSearch owes its success to a virtual ocean of programmers; in addition to getting positive reviews from the likes of Greg Sterling, the service made its way to Canada and those five European countries less than two months after being released in America.
Once again, not bad.
Yahoo’s PR department would do well to learn a few things from those guys (and gals), however. For a statement that is nearly identical to Geraldine Wilson’s, look to what Kerry Munro, the general manager of Yahoo Canada, said to mediacaster. Staying on the same corporate page is a good thing, but reading the same sentences isn’t so commendable.
