We had a great time at the SMX West conference this past week in Santa Clara, CA. Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer kicked things off with his keynote speech, where he addressed several questions on the Yahoo! and Microsoft Search Alliance. Yahoo! participated in several different panels throughout the week, including Thursday’s keynote “The State off the Search Union” roundtable featuring David Roth, Director of Search Engine Marketing. (You can check out the full recap of this at Search Engine Land’s live-blog post.)

One of the hot topics discussed was real-time search, and I had the pleasure of sitting on a panel about that subject, titled “Real Time Search & the Major Search Engines.” Among other things, we discussed the real-time features we’ve rolled out for Yahoo! Search, like tweets in Yahoo! search results and getting the freshest information on developing news as well as some of the challenges and opportunities in this space.

In our down time I visited Yahoo!’s popular booth on the show floor – everyone loved our free coffee! Check out some of the highlights in the video below.

Ivan Davtchev

Yahoo! Search

Continuing our celebration of the Academy Awards, we are rolling out a series of features that make it easier for you to follow coverage of the Oscars on Yahoo! Search.

On Yahoo! Image Search, just search for “Oscars 2010” and you’ll see our Oscars image carousel, with the latest image search results of the nominees and photos of the event. While counting down to the big night, you can easily search for snapshots from the film Inglourious Basterds or photos of nominees like Meryl Streep. You’ll see Oscars-related image results for these films and actors in the Oscars image refiner on the left hand side of the page. On Oscar night, use Yahoo! Image Search to see Penelope Cruz’s gown, George Clooney’s always-dapper suit, and other best- and worst-dressed celebs as they make their way down the red carpet.

This year, we are also giving you a quick and easy way to see the list of nominees and winners from the Web search results page. To see the nominees, just search for “Oscars” or “Academy Awards” on Yahoo! Search and you’ll see a list of nomination categories for the awards. Simply click any of the categories to see the full list of nominees.  We’ll be updating the results as soon as the winners are announced on Sunday night, so you can use the same queries and see the list of winners directly on the search results page.

Want more? We have video coverage of the Oscars too! If you didn’t catch the nominated flicks in the theater, check out the trailers of the nominated films on Yahoo! Video Search. Search for “Oscars” on Yahoo! Video Search and you’ll see that we’ve categorized the trailers on the left hand side of the page by award categories, actor interviews, speeches, and more. After the Oscars, search for the names of the winners to find updates results.

With these new ways of exploring the Academy Awards, we hope you enjoy your “front row” access to the Oscars coverage from beginning to end!

Yahoo! Search, Yahoo! Image Search, and Yahoo! Video Search Teams

The 2010 SMX West conference kicks off this week in Santa Clara, Calif., and we’re excited to be there! Yahoos will be sitting on a handful of panels, so stop by and learn what we’re up to.

Tuesday, March 2, 2010

Time: 10:45 a.m. – 11:45 a.m.
Panel: Real Time Search & The Major Search Engines
Speaker: Ivan Davtchev, Senior Product Manager, Yahoo! Search

Wednesday, March 3, 2010

Time: 1:30 p.m. – 2:45 p.m.
Panel: Search Meets Display, Display Meets Search
Speaker: David Oliveira, Regional Vice President Sales, Yahoo!

Time: 4:45 p.m. – 6 p.m.
Panel: Ask The Paid Search Reps
Speaker: Tomaso Pozzi, Product Manager, Yahoo!

Thursday, March 4, 2010

Time: 9 a.m. – 9:45 a.m.
Panel: Keynote – The State Of The Search Union
Speaker: David Roth, Director of Search Engine Marketing, Yahoo! Inc.

Time: 10 a.m. – 11:15 a.m.
Panel: Bringing SEO In House: How To Be Successful!
Speaker: Laura Lippay, Director of Technical Marketing, Yahoo!

Time: 11:30 a.m. – 12:30 p.m.
Panel: Ask The Search Engines
Speaker: Arnab Bhattacharjee, Senior Director, Yahoo! Search Technology and Engineering, Yahoo!

We’re looking forward to seeing you there!

Yahoo! Search Team

The little bird is right. Yahoo! is partnering with Twitter, making it possible to integrate real-time content into social experiences on Yahoo! Starting today, you’ll be able to see more fascinating and news-worthy tweets when you search on Yahoo!

Last year we integrated Twitter results in the Yahoo! News Shortcut and for other buzzing topics. With today’s partnership, we have access to the full public feed of Twitter content. We’ve built a real-time index of this feed so you can see what people are tweeting about the topics you’re looking for.

Go on, give it a test flight: Go to Yahoo! and search for “Obama Twitter” or “iPad” to check out how we’re working to help you stay in touch with the people and things you care about most – across the entire Web.

If you are as big a fan of curling as we are, here is an example of what you could see on Yahoo! Search:

Real-time search involves striking a balance between showing the very latest content and showing slightly older content that may be more interesting or authoritative. In the coming weeks, we will be experimenting along these lines and upgrading tons of stuff to provide better, quicker, and more relevant Twitter results on Yahoo! Search result pages.

You can learn more about this partnership in today’s Yodel Anecdotal post by Bryan Lamkin, Yahoo! SVP of Consumer Products Group, to get his take on how Yahoo! and Twitter have just made your Web world smaller, yet larger at the same time.

We want to know what you think! Drop us a tweet with your comments at @yahoosearch.

Ivan Davtchev, Shiv Ramamurthi, Saurabh Pathak

Yahoo! Search

We’ve just added a new search suggestion feature in Web search for Yahoo! Taiwan (Yahoo! Kimo). This feature helps users easily enter queries in traditional Chinese in the search box using the Zhuyin (Bopomofo) system. Zhuyin is a phonetic system widely used in Taiwan.

When Taiwan users type their queries, they often need to switch the language input method from English mode to Chinese mode, taking several clicks before they can enter the query. The new search suggestion feature allows users to enter the phonetic representation of a Chinese query while still in English mode. This saves key strokes and makes it more convenient for our Taiwan users.

For example, to search for “Brad Pitt,” searchers can start typing the Zhuyin spelling of the actor’s name while in English mode and see search suggestion in traditional Chinese.

From the first launch of Yahoo! Search Assist in October, 2007, we have continued to enhance the Search Assist experience. We are also focused on the needs of international markets and features that are useful for non-English users. With new features that make your search more convenient, we hope to give you an even faster and more relevant experience when you use Yahoo! Search.

James Ying, Product Manager, Yahoo! Search

What can search data tell you about people? How can you use search data to project the commercial success of movies, video games, and other products? These are just a few of the challenges from the microeconomics and social systems area of the 2010 Key Scientific Challenges Program that we announced on Jan. 27 this year.

The Key Scientific Challenges program is a competition that encourages top graduate students globally to collaborate with Yahoo! and help invent the future of the Internet. The competition focuses on a variety of scientific issues, from developing algorithms that turn raw information into personally relevant experiences, to discovering insights about online advertising and experimenting with new sociological models for how people engage with the Web.

Go to Yodel Anectotal to read a post by Sharad Goel from Yahoo! Labs, where he shares some thoughts on how Yahoo! is tackling the new opportunities for research into the social sciences that the Web is making possible.

Yahoo! Search

It has been a busy month since Shashi Seth joined Yahoo! as our new Senior Vice President of Yahoo! Search Products. Shashi brings with him a wealth of experience from  Google, eBay, Cooliris, and AOL. As the head of Search, Shashi has emphasized his commitment to Yahoo!’s stake in the search market. In this video, he talks about his first month at Yahoo! and clarifies what he sees as some of the most important aspects of the agreement with Microsoft.

With the Microsoft search alliance, “there is a great opportunity for us to change the game in search by focusing on the consumer experience and bringing things to the front end of search like real time information, shortcuts, vertical intent, query analysis, and suggestions,” Shashi says. “The deal could bring a lot of great things for us especially in focusing on the consumer experience.”

Find out more about Shashi’s first month at Yahoo! in the video above.

Yahoo! Search Team

Today we issued a press release announcing that we’ve received clearance from both the U.S. Department of Justice and the European Commission for our search agreement with Microsoft. Now that we’re full steam ahead, I’d like to share what we at Yahoo! see as an exciting opportunity to focus on creating new ways for people to search online.

Today’s Yahoo! Search:

First, let’s take a step back and explain what this alliance means for people who search with Yahoo! Most of the things you see on the typical Yahoo! Search results page below will not immediately change as a result of this alliance. What will change is that the basic search listings and ads will be provided by Microsoft instead of our own back-end platform – those are the text and links that you see in the left-hand image.

However, as you can see highlighted in the right-hand image, Yahoo! will continue to enhance the search result listings as we do for people today. A few examples of this are:

1) Providing you with rich results that display the most relevant information from Yahoo!’s rich content properties, as well as other great product, local, entertainment, reference, social and tech sites.

2) Showing specific results from vertical search products, like Yahoo! News.

3) Providing handy tools on the left-side of the page, such as our Search Pad and Search Scan apps, site filters that help you refine and explore the search results more easily, and related search term suggestions to help you refine your search further if the results aren’t quite what you were looking for.

Tomorrow’s Yahoo! Search:

And what you’re seeing today is just the tip of the iceberg. With Microsoft providing us the underlying list of search results, our Yahoo! team can now focus on making the overall experience of finding stuff online and getting things done easier for you – whether you’re searching at yahoo.com or just looking for specific information in the moment while using our many great products and properties on any device. We have lots of ideas for things we can do to help you with three main aspects of searching:

• Ways to find things faster when you’re just starting your search – by continuing to enhance our great Search Assist technology and also weaving search more deeply and conveniently into other Yahoo! products.

• New ways to help you explore the things that matter most – whether that’s with more rich results and options for organizing the search results page, or by showing you interesting Search topics that you might want to browse through in other relevant places that you spend your time on Yahoo!

• More apps and other tools to help you get things done as quickly as possible. We know that people don’t want to search per se – you want to complete tasks in your day, and we’ll be inventing new ways to help you do that.

I’m very excited about the opportunities ahead and hope all of you will come along with us for the ride. Go to Yahoo! Search today, try out a few searches, and give us feedback. If you have questions about the alliance, we’ve posted more information at the official search alliance Website, on our Yahoo! Search Marketing blog, and on the Yahoo! Developer’s Network blog.

Shashi Seth
Senior Vice President, Yahoo! Search Products

By now you’ve seen our global ad campaign that shows how Yahoo! is focused on YOU like never before. And at Yahoo! Search, we continue to deliver what you need in just one search. We’ve launched a new national ad campaign covering radio and the Web. Our new campaign looks directly at the Yahoo! Search experience, where we continue to bring you all the information you need in one place.

If you haven’t heard our ads on your favorite radio station, you can listen to them here:

Our radio spot, “Forever Lovers”:

Our radio spot, “Sushi Kaiju”:

Whether you’re looking for local information, your favorite sports team, or the latest on entertainment, music, or movies, Yahoo! Search brings you the information you need at your fingertips. So if you haven’t visited us lately, visit Yahoo! Search and give us a try. And let us know what you think about our new ad campaign in the comments section below.

Colleen Jansen
VP, Global Consumer Marketing

This week we showed you some of our hard work from the past six months. On Wednesday, we held “Yahoo! SearchSpeak,” an event for media at our headquarters in Sunnyvale, Calif., to share Yahoo!’s focus on and commitment to creating an amazing search experience.

Our new Senior Vice President of Search Products, Shashi Seth, joined Prabhakar Raghavan, Senior Vice President of Yahoo! Labs and Yahoo!’s Search Strategy, Larry Cornett, Vice President of Search Consumer Products, and David Pann, Vice President of Search Advertising, to share what we’ve been up to and preview some cool things we’re working on for the future. Here’s a video with some highlights from the event:

Some of the innovations in our demo included our Winter Olympics shortcut (which is live today), updates to Search Assist, Twitter integration, and a new idea we’re working on in our labs that will let you circle an area on a map on your iPhone and find restaurants within that area.

“Yahoo! has been in search, is in search, and will continue to be in search in the future,” Shashi said at SearchSpeak. “That is the stake we have put in the ground and we will continue to drive great features.”

We also talked about the great opportunity to make search results more useful for people by presenting them with actual things, rather than just basic links to Web pages – we see it as moving from a “Web of pages” to a “Web of things.” As we continue in this effort, our rich search results will help you discover and explore information that matters most to you.

You can check out the full footage from the event (except for the part during our unfortunate power outage!) and learn more about Yahoo! Search from Shashi and our execs.

Yahoo! Search Team