Yahoo has rolled out great search enhancements recently. I especially like the Search Assist, or rather the way it was implemented. Search assist is nothing new, but Yahoo! has gone further with making it as unobtrusive as possible. It’s great for more general queries where the searcher wants information but is not exactly sure how to formulate the query. For example, if you are looking for information on programming, the search assist neatly breaks this general query down into more specific like java programming, c programming, linear programming, programming languages (which looks like it’s going to give an overview of programming, thus qualifies as best choice probably), tutorials (also a good tangent), and so on.

If your query is related to image content, then results are populated with thumbnail links towards actual images from image search and Flickr (although these are given pretty much only if you actually search for “photo(s)” through your search query).

These changes will improve Yahoo!’s position in the minds of people searching for information in various formats.

Update: Just found this photo on Flickr, from the internal Yahoo! Search launch party.

I love the Search Assist results for “martini”

Share This