Yahoo Unveils Search Assist, Improves Search
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When you’re searching for something online, is the search a means to an end, or an end in itself? Yahoo is betting that it’s the former. This article examines the changes the venerable search engine recently introduced.
Tim Mayer’s recent post on Yahoo’s Search Blog explains the company’s new approach: “One thing we’ve learned since launching our own algorithmic search engine back in 2004 is that at the end of the day, people really don’t want to search; they want to get things done.” The changes in Yahoo’s search engine are designed to give “users the answers they’re looking for quickly and easily, and often in one search.”
Wired made a rather snarky comment about this apparent change in direction, saying that it’s not unusual for a business as beleaguered as Yahoo has been lately to “change the criteria for success to help manufacture the illusion of progress. In this case, Yang and company are trying to convince us that the ease of experience associated with its search is preferable when compared to Google’s battery of results which ultimately promote inaction.”
The thing is, when I’m looking for something online, I do want to find it quickly…which is why I go to Google. Yahoo says its new Search Assist can speed up the process, however. It appears when you hesitate over a query, thanks to a little AJAX magic, to give you suggestions and display related topics. If you don’t hesitate, it doesn’t appear. Also, if you don’t use it to complete your query, it rolls back up when the search results page loads.
Yahoo has integrated inline Flickr photos and video players into its search. In other words, if you’re searching for a photo or a video, you no longer have to go to the site on which it’s hosted; you can view the photo or video directly from the search results page.
If this sounds familiar, it should. Google, MSN, and Ask have all modified their searches to take in more different kinds of results. Many searches on these sites now include visual and video results. No search engine has gone as far in redesigning search as Ask, with its Ask 3D, which I reviewed back in June. But let’s take a look at what Yahoo has to offer.
Next: Getting an Assist with Search >>
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