AskLaila, one of India’s hottest search engines will now be available on your mobile phones via a WAP based app and also an SMS service. Any mobile subscriber with GPRS connectivity can log in to the mobile WAP site (m.asklaila.com) and find what he/ she is looking for. For subscribers who do not have GPRS connectivity or GPRS enabled phones, the SMS search option is always there.

 

Users can send their search query to a specific short code and get results for local search. Presently, the service is available to Vodafone and Reliance subscribers. Bal Krishna Birla, CTO, asklaila told Business Standard that the company would soon launch the service for other telecom service providers as well. Bala said the company had developed a `forgiving search technology’ for the mobile users, which will enable one to get an exact answer for any query, which has typographic, or syntax error. The service is available in all the four cities including Bangalore, Mumbai, Delhi and Chennai where the company has launched its local search on Internet.

 

Other companies have forayed into mobile search as well. The most notable being Airtel’s partnership with Google (apparently Google gets more seach queries through Airtel subscribers rather than its portal in India – don’t have a source for those figures though). Airtel has already stated that most search queries come via SMS. Yahoo also has its oneSearch platform for search via mobile and they are exploring the option of ads on mobile search (something like a click to call ad). More recently, MSN partnered with Vodafone for SMS based search through Live.com. 

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