• by Laurie Sullivan  @lauriesullivan, February 19, 2015

Yahoo has built a feature that allows application developers to incorporate search into apps and earn a percentage of revenue garnered from clicks on ads. Yahoo Search in Apps, introduced Thursday at the company's first mobile developers conference, is one of several features in the company's Mobile Developers Suite.

Jon Paris, director of product management in mobile at Yahoo, introduced the product at the Yahoo Mobile Developers Conference Thursday. Adding search into the applications enables users to stay in the app, he said.

Much of Yahoo's mobile revenue comes from search ads, and in 2014, Yahoo owned 4.9% of the $8.72 billion U.S. mobile search market, according to eMarketer. By comparison, Google held 68% of the U.S. mobile search market in 2014. This year, mobile search is expected to surpass desktop search for the first time, growing to $12.85 billion vs. $12.82 billion on desktop. By 2018, mobile search advertising will exceed $25 billion in the U.S.

Yahoo also pushed an update to its Aviate Launcher, an application available on Google Play, which brings a brand new search feature to the home screen. 

The Aviate feature is usable in about 70 markets, including the United States. Aviate organizes apps and serves information at the moment of need from the home screen. Users on Android 4.0 and later versions will see a search box on their Aviate home screen when their devices update to the latest version. The update also supports Yahoo search on lock screens.

Paris said developers also can use search to enhance content in apps like News Digest. He said content often triggers a search to find out more information about a specific topic without leaving the application.

Yahoo Search in Apps is one of several products available in a new Yahoo Mobile Developers Suite. Along with search, the suite includes Yahoo App Publishing, Yahoo App Publishing, Flurry Analytics with Explorer, and Flurry Pulse.

The Flurry Analytics with Explorer tool enables users to ask complex questions from its data and get the answer in seconds. The Flurry Pulse tool enables developers to securely share any of their data with their partners. comScore said Thursday it has integrated with Yahoo Flurry, which will enable clients to streamline application tagging required for unified measurement in the company's Media Metrix Multi-Platform. 

A comScore spokesperson said it is the third time this year that the comScore team brought more independent metrics to the market -- first to programmatic and digital display advertising, and then to video viewing across multiple screens, and now mobile apps.