Top Time-Saving Yahoo! Search Tips
When it comes to the Web, there’s nothing wrong with cutting a few corners. That’s why we decided to focus today’s post on some time-saving tips for your next search. Some may seem obvious; others you may already know and use. But we hope a few will help you cut through the chase. You can find a full list of shortcuts and search tips here.
1. Square Brackets, “inurl,” “originurlextension,” and Site Restriction
To get a more targeted search, try these tricks out:
- Words within square brackets — adding square brackets to your search makes the keyword match order dependent. So typing in ‘[Jack Black]‘ will return results such as ‘jack with black’ but not ‘black jack.’
- “inurl” — if you want to be sure that a specific term will appear in the site’s URL, use the “inurl:[query]” operator. For example: ‘inurl:iPod.’
- Site restriction — to restrict your search to pages within a specific domain, use the “site:[domain]” operator, followed by your query. For instance: ‘Site:Apple.com iPod.’
- “orginurlextension” — to search on specific file types, add ‘originurlextension:[file format]‘ after your search query. For example: ‘nanotechnology originurlextension:swf‘ OR ‘nanotechnology originurlextension:pdf.’
2. Package Tracking
Did you know that you can track your packages right in Yahoo! Search? Here’s How it works:
- For UPS packages, simply type in your tracking number
- For FedEx or the U.S. Postal Service, just add the name before the tracking number. For example: ‘FedEx [tracking number]‘ or ‘USPS [tracking number]‘
3. Definitions & Synonyms
To look up the definition of a word, try adding “define” or “definition” to your search term. For example: ‘quixotic definition,’ ‘definition of globalization‘ or ‘define ergonomics.’ Or, if you’re looking for a synonym, try adding “synonym” to your search term. For example: ‘humorous synonym.’
4. Exclude Terms, Either/Or and Exact Phrase Match
This one’s been around for a while, but a few simple operators can be a huge time-saver:
- Exclude terms — if you want a term to be excluded from your results, use a minus sign before it. ‘Simpsons -movie‘ returns results for “The Simpsons” TV show, books, games, etc., but not the movie.
- Either/or — by default, all of the words you use in a search are included in the results. If you want to be more flexible, try adding “OR” (note the capitalization) between two terms. For example: ‘Sony laptops OR notebooks‘ gives you results containing either “Sony laptops” or “Sony notebooks.”
- Exact phrase match — if you want results to contain an exact phrase, put quotation marks around it: “Queen Elizabeth I”.
You can also combine these tricks for even more refined searches. Try: ‘“Sony VAIO” laptops OR notebooks.’
5. Travel
With the holidays approaching, many of us have travel on our minds. Here are a few shortcuts to get you to your destination even faster:
- Flight tracker — search for the airline and flight number and you’ll get a shortcut to the flight’s status. Try: ‘American 83‘ or ‘Lufthansa 421.’
- Traffic — if you’re driving instead of flying, you can search for traffic before you leave. Example: ‘traffic Los Angeles.’ Click on the shortcut and you’ll get a map with traffic alerts.
- Maps — try searching for the exact address: ‘1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, Washington, DC.’ Don’t have the address? No problem. Add “map” before the city: ‘map San Francisco.’ You can also search for the zip code by itself: ‘20502.’
You can go here to check out more handy travel shortcuts.
6. Yahoo! Services
If you’re looking for a Yahoo! site, simply add an exclamation point after the site name and voila! Try it out with ‘Mail!,’ ‘News!,’ ‘Sports!,’ or ‘Finance!‘
7. Yahoo! Open Shortcuts
Yahoo! Open Shortcuts are the ultimate time-saving search feature. Add an exclamation point to the front of certain terms to instantly navigate to a URL, search a site, recall a favorite Yahoo! search, or start an application.
- ‘!wiki queen elizabeth‘ takes you directly to the Wikipedia page for Queen Elizabeth.
- ‘!wsf‘ gives you the Yahoo! Search results for “weather San Francisco.”
- ‘!clist‘ takes you to Craigslist.
- ‘!ebay lamps‘ searches eBay for lamps.
Search for ‘!list‘ to see a bunch more. Those examples have already been set up for everyone to use, but the real power is that YOU can create your own customized shortcuts.
Have new ideas or suggestions for us? Let us know in the comments below. We’re always looking for ways to make Yahoo! Search more efficient for you.
Michael Chu
Yahoo! Search
Nice and useful feature especially on those tracking numbers. It saves businesses alot of times.
Nice Commands !
I suggest the use of a new command :
indomain:?……
We would be able to search only in domain names !
i believe indomain is not necessary site: operator does it.
Those commands should not be hidden from the average user! They would have saved much of my time if had known them before! Thank you, anyway, for publishing them now.
Is the API for getting flight status public? We currently have a Flight Tracker zimlet in Zimbra Mail, and we’re using a third-party web service, for that, and customers have to pay to the third party for the web service it in order to get the status info. I’d like to switch to using Yahoo’s flight tracking web service (if there is one) in Zimbra Mail. Please contact me at my zimbra email which is greg AT Zimbra dot com
create your own customized shortcuts is awesome and all of these are great improvements. I simply love this.
Nice Tips. Especially the Flight Tracker and the ability to create own shortcuts are worth to spend more time on yahoo.
Quick comments:
- Good tips, thank you!
- Rename “inurl” to “url”, or “withurl” … in
other words, realize that when someone types
something like “token:search-query” s/he
already knows about your features of search
engine! The _intent_ of the user is to search
something in the URL, but s/he does not remember
that it is called “inurl”. Also, I assume that
all of these (”inurl”, “site” …) are
case-insensitive. For example, “INURL:ipod”
returns garbage.
It is important to note the above because
I don’t think you will have ever have any
other meaning for any other combination of
letters in “inurl”.
- Why not search for packages in the order:
“UPS, FedEx, USPS” and return the results?
Why does the user have to qualify?
If UPS does not have it, first result might
return “package not found” or something similar.
- Add a feature to “search the blogs and
blogs only”.
Great comments about how to narrow down what you want to search for. Besides the items listed for search, I’ve found that Yahoo is really one of the best ways to find how many sites are linking to you and other useful SEO tools.
We currently have a Flight Tracker zimlet in Zimbra Mail, and we’re using a third-party web service
Where can I find a good resort with escorts in the Caribbean? Anyone been to the Dominican Republic on an escorts vacation at Charlisangels?
Great job guys. Is there a comprehensive list of all operators ?
On a general note, the in-page video preview feature is also so cool. I wonder why I don’t see much publicity about the awesomeness of Yahoo!
You mentioned Charlisangels? they`re the coolest place with nice girls from europe. I might stop by after xmas, to get away from the cold and into a party of blondes!
I tried the [...] but I couldn’t see any difference to the search results, but thanks for the info anyway.
I agree, why hide the search tips. Thanks guys.
Wishing everyone an exSEOllent 2008
Came across this whilst trawling for info relating to Microsoft’s bid on Yahoo. There are really cool and useful yahoo features that just need better marketing to poularize. With Microsofts weight behind them it is either going to be mindblowing, or a disaster if popular support gets eroded due to to the Microsoft connection. Time will tell where this is going to go, I myself hope Yahoo keeps their independence, and hence their perceived integrity.
I enjoy the useful search tips put out by yahoo, my fear is that if msn swallows up yahoo then we will see an end to this.