Testing a New Yahoo! Search Experience
Click to play demo
We know that search has been a hot topic over the past few weeks, so we wanted to share with you what the Yahoo! Search team has been focusing on lately. Today, we are announcing a new search page design that makes search more personally relevant and helps people explore the things that matter most to them. It exemplifies how Yahoo! is continuing to innovate in search technology and the user experience.
A few weeks ago, Yahoo! began rolling out a new homepage that is tailored to your interests. You may also have noticed that the Yahoo! Search team began testing a new design that will unify the experience between the new homepage and our search results page. We’ve been doing a lot of research such as usability experiments and eye-tracking research so that we can bring you a more personally relevant search experience that better understands what you’re looking for and helps you get things done quickly on the Web.
Unified Design
One of the designs we have been testing aligns the page framework and design with the new Yahoo! Homepage. Not only does this create a more integrated Yahoo! product experience, it also provides quick access to valuable search-specific applications and features in the left-hand column. For example, the section titled “Show Results From” helps people explore the results that matter most to them through sites they know and love.
Quick Access to Search Features
About a month ago, we launched a great new note-taking application called Search Pad. In our new search page design, you have even easier access to the research you’ve been doing right at the top of the left column. In addition, we have integrated the SearchScan and Safe Search feature settings on the left column so you can more easily manage your protection from viruses, spyware, and spam while you search.
Enhancing Search Assistance
Our search assistance features are still the most sophisticated query assistance technologies on the Web. With the new design, assistance is still easily available directly below the search box where you need it most.
In addition, we are also testing ways to allow you to explore results through the “Related Concepts” section in the left column even when the Search Assist layer is hidden.
SearchMonkey
We recently celebrated the one-year anniversary of SearchMonkey. Over the past months, we have been driving efforts toward increasing structured data on the Web, more uses for existing structured data, and easier ways to display enhanced results for some data types. With the new search page design, we will be making it even easier to see richer results from an increasing number of sites. For example, you can easily show all of the enhanced results from Wikipedia on the new search page.
We’re testing the new Yahoo! Search results page with a percentage of our U.S. visitors chosen at random, so you may be one of the few who get a chance to try it out. Please let us know what you think in the comments section below. Over the next few weeks, we will be adding more new features during these tests. Be sure to check in often to see what we’re up to!
Larry Cornett
Vice President, Consumer Products, Yahoo! Search
And Carol Bartz wants to throw this technology away. I hope your board of directors fires her because she is an idiot.
When the time comes, take your search technology and start a new company. You just innovated in a way that Google and Microsoft never thought of.
This coup in search engineering technology will unfortunately go unheralded because you now work for a moron.
Congrats! Looking forward to seeing these new features in the wild. Where do I recognize that voice from!?
i like the new homepage design, and the rollover effect at the left nav bar. keep up the good work!
@Michael Martinez: Er, no. This is all about the front-end, which remains unaffected by the Yahoo-Microsoft deal. The *backend* (as in, the thing that provides the search results) is going to be “thrown away” and replaced by Bing’s.
Hopw will this new look work when BING is the underlying technology?
@Michael Maritnez, Usually I bypass comments but I have to reply to this. I saw your website. You seem like the kind of intelligent person that can string together a coherent argument in your mind. So I just astounds me how you so spectacularly misunderstand the Yahoo-Microsoft search deal. I don’t get it, do you bother to read past the headlines of the news or is it just the pictures were not pretty enough?
The technology in this post is exactly the technology that Yahoo did not give to Microsoft. In fact it exactly the example of how Yahoo will differentiate its search once it starts using Bing results. Even more, this is exactly the kind of innovation that Yahoo is now able to pursue now it has cut itself out of the server farm race with Google.
The suggestions are great on the Yahoo home page – but why leave them there; they are so usefull other pages would be better with them
“So I just astounds me how you so spectacularly misunderstand the Yahoo-Microsoft search deal. I don’t get it, do you bother to read past the headlines of the news or is it just the pictures were not pretty enough?”
Here is the Microsoft-Yahoo! search deal in a nut shell: Microsoft will power Yahoo! search for ten years, hiring all or most of Yahoo!’s search engineers during that time frame.
At the end of 10 years Microsoft can walk away with Yahoo!’s search technology, technicians, and so-called “search market share”.
Consumers lose 1 of 3 leading search algorithms.
Merchants can expect to pay more for advertising on Yahoo! and Microsoft’s advertising network(s).
Did I miss anything?
Oh yes — most people who have looked at the deal have concluded that Yahoo! no longer wants to be part of the search industry.
HP.com has a search engine that handles 10s of millions of queries every month — more than Ask.com, probably. But their site search tool isn’t measured in “search market share” (they also don’t carry ads).
I can see how Steve Ballmer wins because he finally eliminates a competitor from the search industry.
How do the rest of us win?
I as an SEO would prefer to have three search algorithms to work with.
I as a searcher would prefer to have three search algorithms to work with.
I as an advertiser would prefer not to see my advertising costs go up.
I clearly don’t feel like a winner in this deal. Why should you or anyone else but Microsoft feel that way?
“Er, no. This is all about the front-end, which remains unaffected by the Yahoo-Microsoft deal. The *backend* (as in, the thing that provides the search results) is going to be “thrown away” and replaced by Bing’s.”
Pardon me. I was so impressed with the auto adjustment in query relevance (which neither Google nor Microsoft offer) that I forgot people would just be focusing on the front end announcement.
Watch the video. You’ll see what piqued my interest.
That proves a great evolution :)
Search Monkey is amazing ! When could every website profit from this feature ?
Thank you
Search Monkey is great!!!!
Search Monkey is greatt! Thank you Yahoo!
Hello Djerba,
Actually, any website can easily plug into SearchMonkey by providing RDFa, microformats, or a feed of structured data. For more information, please refer to http://developer.search.yahoo.com/start.
Evan Goer
Yahoo! SearchMonkey Team
Hi Search Team:
Other day I was trying to search my mail. It doesn’t turns up any results though there are tons of words matching the search word. The search isn’t working always, in my case, and hope you can make us more reliable on Yahoo.
Thanks,
Mahesh.
I love how they provide me with examples of increasing modularity on-line: search is three steps (collecting, structuring and presenting relevant info) and they are increasingly proving to belong in different categories. Yahoo! has never been good at integrating the three and, as such, isn’t a search company. They have been good at one of the step at a time, and they know that #1 and #2 are respectively a natural monopoly and a Stackelberg duopoly: rather then flee, they outsourced it to the cheapest bidder, to be the third player in #3 that might take three or four sustainable players.
. I am using the web mail application for mail solutions.
I am facing problems in searching the mails using search in webmail window.
What ever the search string I given it will give result “string not found” . Even if the search string is available in mail folders.
I already opened this complaint some 2 weeks back and received a acknowledgement also.Unfortnalty I don’t noted the complaint number.
After that till now, I did not received not even an update on this complaint .
I’ve been using the new beta search for a while. It’s actually a lot better than it looks in the video. I really like the fixed width layout and the ability to filter by “video sites”. When are you going to make this a public beta? I want to try it in different browsers.
I think that the search engine first and foremost task is to enhance the user experience…
Hello ,
Nice search features .
Thanks
It is my opinion, probably way later than anyone elses’ … that the present “search” options and results are terribly corrupted by the changes that have occurred but go unnoticed because they are in the background. I used to be able to search using Yahoo’s search engine and expect to get results that were comprehensive and usable (at least for me) and now all I get is what some ad person might think I am looking for. I have difficulty getting the information I seek … a good example is trying to search about why my GMC odometer doesn’t work and my speedometer does? What I want to find out is “why” not pay some GM wannabe mechanic a fee to tell me something I don’t already know or to make a bit of chump change at my expense. It is getting to the point to where greed is going to completely ruin “search” it is the reason I will never Google, I won’t “Bing” and I will soon not Yahoo. GL to you … I hope somebody reads this who might be able to do something about it. But of course, I doubt that would happen … BTW why don’t you have a feedback loop on your website so I can be sure someone at Yahoo could hear about how upset we are?
Don’t like the searchpad so much. it looks distracting when it’s on the left side.
If you have to have the seachpad thing putting it on the right wouldn’t be so bad. I just don’t like having to look at it.
I love the new layout and search features. Good work.
Your new home page sucks. How do I get your old homepage back.
the left side bar IS very distracting considering that’s where anyone looks first for results & then have to go right for every line. Along with the new look, even new results have taken over my rankings.. sob.. I miss Old Pretty Yahoo!!!!
The new search results page SUCKS!!!!! The blue bar full of advertising and links is annoying and in the way. The fact that we can’t get rid of it is aggravating and it pisses me off everytime I see it. I’ve been using Google more and more since this was implemented and since I can’t find anyway to change the yahoo layout I’ve just added Google to my favorites and search from there. If you absolutely have to change layouts at least give your customers the ability to select which view they want. Buy the way, your description of the changes and increased functionality is such a load of crap it is funny. Nice spin. I’m off to Google.
How educational are the comments for this post! I appreciate the discourse between folks who really keep up on search developments. Interesting!