America Online, Inc. announced the launch of a new version of AOL Search on its free site and a partnership with Ingenio, a company that offers its Pay-Per-Call Advertising Platform to local merchants.

Ingenio's Pay-Per-Call advertisers are charged only after a phone call is made to their business as a result of the ad. An auction-based, open bidding approach gives advertisers insight into their local market, allowing them to determine how much a phone lead is worth to their business.

AOL plans to showcase these advertisers in a sponsored link search results area on AOL Search, the AOL.com Web site, AOL Yellow Pages and other AOL properties.

The new version of AOL search combines results and sponsored links from Google Inc., a technology partner of AOL. Enhancements of AOL Search include:

• Updated design
• A new sorting and clustering feature that organizes relevant search results by topics and displays them alongside the list of general Web search results
• A new layer of results called "Snapshots" appears at the top of search results and presents editorial content and relevant information like local movie show times, sports stats and current events

"We've announced new partnerships and programs to expand our AOL Search services, broadened our appeal to advertisers with whom we already have relationships, and now we're reaching out to small and medium-sized businesses with a new pay-per-call platform that we think will provide valuable new opportunities for them to reach consumers," says Gerry Campbell, vice president and general manager, AOL Search and Navigation.