Vurb App Launches As One-Stop-Shop For Mobile Search

It has been said by some that Google Search was clearly not built for mobile. Although Google works great on the web, mobile is a very different environment. The small screen is largely ruled by apps, and the ever-expanding popularity of mobile usage may provide Vurb with the consumer interest required to achieve success.

Vurb is a mobile search engine that gathers information from partnered apps, such as Yelp and Rotten Tomatoes, and deep links users out to apps such as Uber and Google Maps. The concept is to simplify the way you search by contextualizing results and orienting them around “cards,” instead of showing results like a list of links. Each card contains an overview of the critical information for an item, such as ratings, location, and so on. While a user is searching for cards, they can create “decks” of items that can be saved and shared with other Vurb users, as well as with people who haven’t downloaded the app.

Although the San Francisco-based Vurb initially started in 2011, it may now be poised to truly find its footing, as the company has scrapped its web version to focus solely on mobile. The company has just launched its iOS app, and explains that it has an Android version in development.

Vurb currently offers explicit support for searches of places (restaurants, landmarks, stores), movies, TV, video and music. It plans to offer support of events and shopping soon.

So, how exactly does it work?

From the app’s homescreen, a user can search across all of Vurb’s verticals or swipe to start browsing in a specific one. For example, when you search for a movie, in the search results you’ll see IMDB, Rotten Tomatoes and MetaCritic scores. If you tap through, you’ll get a full, rich media card containing details about the film, showtimes, recent news, cast and crew, video trailers, reviews and options to deep link to pages about the movie in other apps. If you tap through showtimes, you can bounce into Fandango to buy tickets. Now that Vurb knows which theater you’ve chosen, it can contextually offer suggestions of nearby restaurants. Each of these establishments’ Vurb cards can show reviews, an option to make a reservation through OpenTable, and deep links into Uber and Lyft to order a ride, with the restaurant pre-populated as the destination.

As you’re conducting these searches, any card that you come across can be saved into a “Deck” for later reference, and each card or deck can be easily shared with others. Recipients can “like” or comment on plans that are sent to them, to collaborate and make the final decisions.

There’s a great deal of potential in this concept. For example, a user could become a tastemaker by creating popular decks of hotspots that can be made public for others to use as recommendations. Vurb hopes that people will follow friends and influencers, thereby creating a robust and highly engaging platform to achieve widespread interest and success.

The opportunities for revenue are vast as well. Along with search results comes the option for sponsored placement, and with developers increasing their spending on app install ads on platforms like Facebook, Vurb could set up a system to charge them to be “suggested” for various tasks.

For auto dealerships and businesses in a variety of sectors, Vurb could create a valuable new channel for reaching consumers. The company’s founder and CEO, Bobby Lo, explains that Vurb’s concept is to surface all of the information that a user requires, from a variety of existing sources. Lo feels that this offers the opportunity for smaller companies to surface their brand and apps in search results, without the need to run massively expensive advertising campaigns to get users. He explains that one of the biggest frustrations with mobile is that although there are so many great apps and there is technology like deep linking to stitch them together, “mobile apps live in silos and seldom offer people ways to integrate or share information with each other.” Lo believes that Vurb provides a solution to this problem, by removing the barrier and effectively connecting apps together.

However, Vurb isn’t the first to make this attempt. For example, last year, a free app called “Wildcard” was released, which offered a similar search platform. Regardless, siloed app searches remain the standard approach.

Will Vurb prove to be the first company that can build a popular centralized mobile search experience? It’s obviously still too early to tell, but we’ll definitely be watching as developments unfold in the coming period.