Ness Computing, the Silicon Valley-based startup responsible for the popular iPhone restaurant-finder app Ness, has just received backing to the tune of $15 million in Series B funding from a number of partners, including American Express Ventures, SingTel Innov8 n Singapore, and an affiliate of the LeFrak Organization.

Ness made a big splash last year with its hit restaurant search application. No ordinary search app, Ness is able to personalize its search results by using what its creators call a “Likeness Engine” that pours through social media data to come up with restaurant recommendations based on the user’s tastes and preferences.

The app attempts to list its results in order of those venues you’ll enjoy the most, basing them on a “Likeness Score” that predicts how much you’ll like different dining venues. To come up with its Likeness Score, Ness draws on ‘social signals’ from services such as Facebook, Foursquare and Instagram, together with its 2.5 million user reviews.

Ness has been slowly evolving since its launch too – a range of updates has seen it incorporate more than 325,000 menus from the SinglePlatform service, while it now has the ability to book a table at many of the restaurants it recommends, courtesy of OpenTable.

But now that Ness has all but sewn up the restaurant search business, it has its sights set on telling you more than just where to grab a bite to eat – it’s hoping to use its innovative search engine for new verticals such as shopping, nightlife, movies and so on.

The start-up is hoping to use its new-found capital to expand its team of computer scientists and engineers, so that it can design new interfaces and machine learning techniques to better improve its search capabilities. As part of its plan, Ness plans to integrate more search channels, including Twitter and users’ credit card transactions as it looks to perfect its algorithm.

The new round of financing follows an earlier cash injection of $5 million it secured from Khosla Ventures, in participation with Bullpen Capital, TomorrowVentures, Alsop Louie Partners and a number of angel investors.