Written By Drupad Sil | July 12, 2007 | Share This |

yahoosearch

Yahoo.com today announced the implementation of Search Suggest on its main page. Search Suggest, already used by the Yahoo and Google toolbars in Mozilla Firefox, presents suggested queries as you are typing, shortening your search time.

Most users are probably familiar with this feature from its use on other sites, but Yahoo is taking a bold move by offering it on its main page – something even Google doesn’t do yet. However, it still is seemingly on a test run because Yahoo hasn’t implemented it in other sections of the site, like search.yahoo.com, for example. Its main page implementation is definitely unobtrusive, so those of you who are confident in what you’re looking for can type away without paying any heed to the suggestions. Users can also toggle it off, if it’s too much of an annoyance.

Kevin Lee at Yahoo! Search outlines the general idea behind Search Suggest:

“Let’s say I’m trying to keep up with our illustrious “governator” here in California. I type “arnold s” in the search box and the suggestions pop up Arnold Schwarzenegger, which saves me from trying to spell out his last name. Or, I’m watching TV and wonder what song is in the background of a commercial that just came on. Problem is that I only remember part of the company name, “journey diamond”. I type it into our new search box, and “journey diamond jewelry commercial song” is suggested right away - problem solved. Of course, the assistance it provides when I attempt to find some new bicycle tires, “mavic ksyrium” just after the first few letters, “mavic k” is much appreciated. Not only does the feature eliminate my embarrassment of misspellings, it makes for a much more efficient search experience.”

Using his first example, Arnold Schwarzenegger, I checked out the results at Yahoo’s main page. True, an “Arnold Schw” query will certainly prompt Search Suggest to fill in the rest of his last name, which is great. Unfortunately, if a user isn’t aware that the Terminator’s last name begins with an S, and types in “Arnold Chw”, Search Suggest rather unhelpfully lists all the common misspellings of his last name, including “chwarziniger”, “chwartziniger” etc… So, the spelling impaired aren’t completely off the hook – you need to at least get the first letter correct.

An interesting point is brought up by Jordan McCollum at Marketing Pilgrim:

“But the fact that Yahoo would tout a feature that is designed to shave seconds off your time on the site might actually be a good thing—realizing that when you’re performing a search, the search engine isn’t supposed to be your destination. Are they sacrificing their time spent metric? Perhaps. Will it be worth it? Perhaps.”

Earlier this week, Nielsen scrapped the page views metric in favor of time spent as the primary ranking metric. With Yahoo ranked third in both page views (one behind Google) and total time spent (three ahead of Google), will sacrificing time spent on searches really make that much of a difference? I’m not too sure on that point, but I applaud Yahoo’s implementation of the feature for its sheer convenience.

Topics: Search: News, Yahoo! |