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The MSN Search blog has divulged a beta test for a mobile version of its local search function.

A collaboration between MSN Mobile and MSN Search has resulted in the development of a MSN Local Search beta test for mobile phones, according to the MSN Search blog. The service will be available to US customers with Windows Mobile devices; it will also work on phones with WAP 2.0-capable browsers.

Aron Holzman's post describes some of the early beta's capabilities:
You can search for a restaurant, store, school, dentist, museum - basically, anything listed in the Yellow Pages and White Pages. Just enter your search term (i.e. "coffee" or "Victrola" ) and location (zip code, city/state or full street address) and hit the Search button.

Your recently used locations are even stored and easily accessible the next time you use the service. We'll return the first handful of results, including name, address, distance from your current location and phone number - which you can dial by clicking! Select the result name and you'll see a page with more detail, including a color map.

Future collaborative efforts will yield services like SMS and send-to-phone, according to the post. Local search figures as the greatest potential growth area for search engines. Both Google and Yahoo have had local search features available for mobile handsets in recent months.

David Utter is a staff writer for WebProNews covering technology and business. Email him here.