14 DAY TRIAL // Yahoo may not be powering its own searches anymore, but it's still in the web search game and today it's debuting an interesting new search category, apps. Along with the regular search categories like Images, News and so on, there is now Apps. This section enables you to search for and discover new applications for your mobile device, be it iPhone or an Android phone.
Yahoo is also introducing an app version of the search engine for both platforms, which offers pretty much the same functionality via an interface designed for mobile devices and their small screens.
"With 425,000-plus apps in the Apple App Store and 200,000 apps in Android Market, we know finding what you want can be exhausting," Yahoo writes.
"There are times you don’t know the specific name of the app, so you’re leaving it up to chance that you’re actually downloading the app you really want," it added.
"Using Yahoo!’s powerful search technology, App Search and AppSpot allow you to zero-in on any app by showing matching app titles with a full comprehensive description, price, overall star rating from users, and screenshots in one spot," Yahoo added.
Yahoo is hardly the first to try to make it easier for users to find the right applications for their phones, but it's an interesting approach from such a large company, especially since the new feature is integrated into the main search engine.
The apps section is part search engine, part discovery tool. A number of popular applications are show at the top in a slideshow, similar to how other such tools display featured apps, but Yahoo says this selection is completely personalized and changes constantly.
There are also lists of popular apps in three categories, Free, Paid, and Highest Rated. If you stumble upon an app that sounds promising, you can either scan the QR code for the app, get the link to the official marketplace to get it or have the link sent to your phone via SMS.