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Yahoo brings mobile app search tool to the UK

Yahoo has officially launched an app search tool that works across both iPhone and Android to let people find mobile apps.App Search was announced on Wednesday, but went live in the UK at the end of last year, following an initial release in the US.
Written by Ben Woods, Contributor

Yahoo has officially launched an app search tool that works across both iPhone and Android to let people find mobile apps.

App Search was announced on Wednesday, but went live in the UK at the end of last year, following an initial release in the US.

It will return search matches for both platforms, depending on the OS filter selected, after scouring the 350,000 items in the Apple App Store and the 200,000-plus titles in Android Market, Yahoo said.

Yahoo is also "looking at" including the BlackBerry World portal in the search results, as well as delivering a standalone iPad app, a company spokeswoman told ZDNet UK. However, she could not say whether the search engine will be extended to other platforms, such as Windows Phone.

The browser-based tool appears as a tab on the Yahoo search page. In addition to filtering apps by platform, people can also filter by price or a specific category. They can also discover new software via the 'top trending', 'top free', 'top paid' and 'most reviewed' categories.

The platform will also return results that match more-general searches, rather than searches for a specific app's name. For example, searching for 'bus arrival times London' will return relevant results as well as searching for the name of a specific London bus route app.

Once users find an app they want, it can be downloaded in one of three ways: by having it sent straight to the device using the mobile phone number; by downloading it directly from the Android Market or iOS App Store; or by scanning the on-screen QR code.

In May last year, Google began updating the Google Market to make it easier to find apps in the store according to rating and categorisation. It followed this in July with another update that introduced book and film rental, and purchase options.

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