Yahoo making big improvements in search

Yahoo is making important improvements to the user interface and the output of its search engine. It will now suggest complete search queries for you as you type. It makes entering queries a lot faster and improves the likelihood that you'll spell your query correctly. Google offers a similar feature in its downloadable add-on, Google Toolbar, but not yet on its Web site.

The suggestions box also shows related search terms. It's pretty smart. When I tried searching for "Corvette," for example, the Search Assist box also displayed "sports cars," "z06," and other related terms.

Other interface improvements include the embedding of video clips in search results pages (some pop up over the page when you play them), as well as photos from Flickr.

The new Yahoo. Shown here: Search Assist (blue box at top), where related search results are displayed; and a Shortcut (the boxed search result) displaying a collection of formatted links and content. Advertising links have been removed from this screenshot.

Yahoo is also bringing a fair amount of structured data into its search results pages. If you search for a musical artist, you're likely to get a specially-formed result at the top of the page that has links to albums, lyrics, and to music samples that play directly. Movies get a similar treatment. Events are pulled from Yahoo's Upcoming database and displayed in search. Shopping results come in from Yahoo shopping. Sports results, weather, maps, travel, and other data is likewise displayed directly in the search pages, nicely formatted so you can tell what it is.

Yahoo Search's new features are useful. There's likely more to come, too, from Yahoo and its competitors. Most search engines now do more than just parse links and display the content that surrounds them; they instead understand content so they can display information from multiple sites together in useful blocks. Google and Microsoft are already doing this and will no doubt continue to improve how they extract meaning from sites. Ask also has highly-structured search results pages that put the other engines to shame; a good Ask result page is a site to see.

Also coming soon: "Semantic search" engines such as Powerset and Hakia. Their founders say their engines will find what you're looking for even if there's not a single word match between your query and the best result. And their understanding of content should enable the creation of search result pages that answer questions instead of just pointing users at Web sites.

[tomermolo]

PredictAd Search

The PredictAd service allows you to add some similar search features to your own website or blog. Check out this article on PredictAd for more info:

http://www.ringofblogs.com/2007/10/01/predictad-navigation-monetization-and-search/

[tomermolo]

PredictAd Search

The PredictAd service allows people to add some similar features that Yahoo has added (autocomplete, rss live search) to your own website or blog.

Check out this article on PredictAd for more info:
http://www.ringofblogs.com/2007/10/01/predictad-navigation-monetization-and-search/

[baygbm]

do more. do better

I use Yahoo for search, but only because I own stock in it. They have done a poor job over the last several years.

Go to a company?s website and perform a search, often that search is powered by Google. Go to a college or university?s website and do the same, often that search is powered by Google . . . those, now established, relationships are not going to be undone by Yahoo?s ?big improvements.?

Google has a strong recruitment arm to find and hire the best programmers from the best schools around the world. Does Yahoo?

Google is expanding the concept of search and looking at the human genome to ?search? for genetic associations with all manner of diseases, identifying links that, so far, are unknown. Is Yahoo doing this sort of thing?

There are a number of other things Google is doing that I can?t mention here. The point is that Yahoo needs to be both more creative and focused in its execution. Now! Time is not on their side.

[Jay_in_FL]

Poor programming

Try searching for "Ingalls -Laura" without the quotes, and it pops up suggestions with Laura in the search criteria. Programming error.

[Jay_in_FL]

Yahoo ignores users suggestions

I own Yahoo stock, and have for a long time. They are not much better, if any, at listening to users, than the Prodigy management. You may know how poorly Prodigy has done. They were partly owned by Sears, could have made the whole Sears catalog product line available on line. Instead, they shut down the catalog dept, and sold Prodigy. Stupid. Yahoo management and programmers combined are not worth much. Hopefully they can clean up their operation, make a better company, and make me some money.

[jssshashi]

Correction Google Already Has it.

Set your google link to google suggest
It auto completes the search results.

http://www.google.com/webhp?complete=1&hl=en

[flickrz]

Not it doesn't

There is a fundamental difference between suggest and yahoo assist. Yahoo assist also provides relevant keywords in the dropdown after firing the first query. This actually allows you to narrowdown results.
For example if your first query is "india" from dropdown menu you can pick several available extensions that are relevant to keyword "India" such as "tourism" "population" etc. So if you now click on "tourism" it will give results of "India tourism". Plus, all the shortcuts that are available now are not there in google. Simply because google doesn't own sports, music etc. properties.
This is a much better feature than simple suggest. I am sure google will follow the suit if this new yahoo search is able to dent google's castle.

[jssshashi]

Correction - Check Google Suggest

Google suggest Autocompletes.
http://www.google.com/webhp?complete=1&hl=en

[flickrz]

Yahoo Assist vs Google Suggest

There is a fundamental difference between suggest and yahoo assist. Yahoo assist also provides relevant keywords in the dropdown after firing the first query. This actually allows you to narrowdown results.
For example if your first query is "india" from dropdown menu you can pick several available extensions that are relevant to keyword "India" such as "tourism" "population" etc. So if you now click on "tourism" it will give results of "India tourism". Plus, all the shortcuts that are available now are not there in google. Simply because google doesn't own sports, music etc. properties.
This is a much better feature than simple suggest. I am sure google will follow the suit if this new yahoo search is able to dent google's castle.