Yahoo! Search Steps Up
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Written By Sepideh Saremi | October 2, 2007 | Share This
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Yahoo yesterday unveiled big changes to its search engine. Most noticeable is the addition of “Search Assist,” a slick drop-down panel that suggests related searches, recognizing when users need guidance “by measuring user typing speed and identifying hesitations in searching,” according to Search Engine Journal. New search results will also yield Flickr images and playable video on the main search page. Yahoo’s various vertical properties - Travel, Music, Movies, Shopping, etc. - will all be featured prominently, as well. From TechCrunch:
Do a search for a restaurant or hotel, and results from Yahoo Local come out on top, with links to maps, ratings, and reviews. Type in “bourne ultimatum
,” and the top result is a widget from Yahoo Movies with a trailer you can click on, audience reviews, and show times nearest you. Search for “Vancouver
Yahoo’s being lauded for doing a good job of tying together with search all the various pieces its built and acquired in recent years. It’s even being called a “Google killer,” again by Search Engine Journal, albeit in the title of a different post from the one above, which then cedes that perhaps it’s not really a killer:
Is the new Yahoo Search a Google killer? More than likely not. The new Yahoo Search may win some converts over from Google or help with a bit of marketshare, but ideally the new Yahoo Search Assist will result in assisting the happiness factor of Yahoo users and searchers who are not used to finding what they are looking for via conventional searching methods.
Though Yahoo’s rolling out everything but soul search with these improvements (though Search Assist is pretty close), it’s still playing catch-up at this stage. Unlike Yahoo’s until-recent strategy of accumulating cool services (Flickr, Delicious) and just holding on to them rather than integrating them, Google has done a much better job treating each new service it acquires or builds like a puzzle piece that fits into an improved user experience: Gmail, Blogger, Docs, Calendar, and Reader are all easily adopted by Google users, who often quickly become addicted to them (the sole exception may be Orkut, which is the un-Googliest - and plain ugliest - of them all). So while it’s not a killer yet, Yahoo certainly took some big strides towards Google status yesterday; it’ll be a killer the day “Yahoo” becomes a verb.
Topics: Search: Innovations, Search: News, Yahoo! |
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