We just took a look back at the progress we’ve made over the last year with Search Assist and a look forward to our goals of continuing to improve the usefulness of our assistance technology.

With this objective in mind, we recently launched Search Assist for image search to guide users to the answers they seek in a new way. To better enhance the search experience, we took a two-tiered approach to the query formulation and refinement process. In the first stage, we’ve maintained the same paradigm of text suggestions that have helped users of web search complete and refine queries. The second stage is new - from now on, Search Assist can be opened after a query is entered into the search box for users to preview sample thumbnails for the top related search terms.

So if you search for roses in image search, you can preview the types of results you’ll get for red roses, Guns N’ Roses or black roses before clicking on the suggestion. This way, you know what images to expect before drilling down deeper to find your answers.

Search Assist for images has already been launched on the search results page and we’ll be launching it on Yahoo.com soon. Stay tuned for more improvements to Search Assist for image search in the near future. And please share your feedback in the comments below.

Kaushal Kurapati
Director of Product Management
Yahoo! Search