October 02, 2007
Yahoo Catches Up
Yahoo! has upgraded the look and feel for Yahoo! Search - but only in the United States and United Kingdom - Canadians won't see these changes if they are using the www.yahoo.ca domain.
The changes are in the same vein as those done earlier at Ask, Google, and Live (just yesterday).
+ Search Assist: Help the searcher refine the query with related searches and concepts. Yahoo is doing that with its Search Assist. As you key in terms, Yahoo suggests phrases.
This alone isn't much, but when you get to the search results page, clicking on the More button on the Also-Try line will bring up concepts that are related to the search query. This is useful.
Danny Sullivan says that Search Assist is similar to Altavista's Prisma of long ago when Altavista analyzed the first 50 results to pick out key terms. "Search Assist operates similarly to Prisma, though the suggestions are based on the top 20 pages that are found for a search, rather than the first 50 results. In addition, the integration is much slicker."
Selecting any of the concepts adds that phrase to your search query.
It's also here that you can turn off Search Assist, if you find the suggestions too distracting or time consuming (they take time to appear and read).
+ Multimedia results: Yahoo will show links to relevant photos from Flickr and Yahoo Images, and videos from YouTube, Metacafe or Yahoo! Video. For example - turkey pictures will show a map, travel photo, and the bird. Videos are not as certain - nothing for cooking a turkey (even if you add the word video and although Yahoo Video does have these), but cats jumping does bring one up.
As is the case at all engines, Yahoo will show multimedia results for any query on a Hollywood celebrity.
+ Performance: Greg Sterling reported that Yahoo claims search performance is 50% faster and the index is the "most comprehensive".
+ Shortcuts: There are more shortcuts. Greg Sterling noted, "... Yahoo has announced the availability of more categories of Shortcuts (content modules at the top of results) across a range of vertical categories: events, music, movies, travel, sports, health, shopping, businesses, and restaurants. These modules present structured content, including multimedia files, reviews, photos, and relevant links, depending on the category and the query."
Also see the Yahoo Shortcut page.
References:
From "To Do" to "Done" in One Search, Yahoo! Search Blog
Yahoo Sharpens Search Term Precision by Jeremy Kirk, IDG News Service via PCWorld. (Oct 2)
Yahoo Upgrades Search Experience, Launches 'Search Assist' & Multimedia Content In Results by Greg Sterling, Search Engine Land (OCt 2)
Search Suggestions On Steroids: Yahoo Search Assist by Danny Sullivan, Search Engine Land (Jul 25)
Postscript: Advanced Search - Yahoo moved this under Options where people really won't find it. Preferences are here too - increase number of results per page, and request a link to 'More from this site'.
Posted by Gwen at October 2, 2007 03:54 PM