« Get the Freshest Information on Developing News | Main | Yahoo!’s 2009 Year in Review »
November 24, 2009

Get Richer Results with Yahoo! Search Assist

Today we are rolling out several new Search Assist features for the Web search boxes at the top of nearly every property on Yahoo!, including Yahoo! News, Yahoo! Sports, and Yahoo! Finance. These new features can take you directly to the information you need, whether it is real-time stock quotes or movie trailers. You can also get enhanced search suggestions and easily navigate to the Yahoo! property that fits your needs the most.

With today’s enhanced Search Assist features, you can get information you need about movies, sports, travel destinations, or stock price directly in the Search Assist layer. For example, type the stock symbol for Energy Select SPDR in the search box. The Search Assist layer displays real-time stock quotes for the company, as well as links to stock charts and news about the company.

When you type the name of an athlete, like Kobe Bryant, Search Assist shows news, game log, scores, and schedules. You can also see travel information when you type the name of any travel destination.

stock example

sports example

travel example

Another Search Assist enhancement launched todayis the ability to help you navigate to the Yahoo! property that best fits your needs. When you type the name of a Yahoo! property in the search box, the Search Assist layer displays a link to the property. For example, if you are using Yahoo! Finance and would like to check your email, type “mail” in the search box and you will see a link to your inbox in the Search Assist layer.

mail example

You can also type “news” to go to Yahoo! News, or even “U.S. News” to see a link to the U.S. News section of Yahoo! News.

Lastly, today’s new Search Assist features include a smart detection system that can take you to Yahoo! Image Search or Yahoo! News Search. For example, type Obama in the search box and the Search Assist layer shows links to Yahoo! Image Search and Yahoo! News Search to help you find news or pictures of the president.

images and news search example

From first launch of Yahoo! Search Assist in October, 2007, we have continued to enhance the Search Assist experience. In fact, the number of queries from Search Assist has increased three-fold since the product’s kick off. With today’s improvements, we hope to give you an even faster and more relevant experience.

Linda Wang, Senior Product Manager, Yahoo! Search
Drew Geishecker, Director of Product Management, Yahoo! Network Services

Permalink | Comments (13) | | Delicious | digg | Filed In: Search

Comments

  1. Nice :)

    I tried to test some travel queries and can’t find these new features !
    Are these details getting data from SearchMonkey apps ?

    Posted by: Djerba | November 28th, 2009 6:34 am

  2. I cant find any of the feature sets being described in the article above. Sounds like i’m not the only one. Is it possible to publish more information on this? thanks Carl Parisien Natick MA

    Posted by: Carl Parisien | November 30th, 2009 8:29 am

  3. I tried to test some travel queries and can’t find these new features !

    Posted by: Ordis | December 1st, 2009 2:33 am

  4. The feature is launched on the web search box of most Yahoo properties. For example, you can go to news.yahoo.com, wait for the page load first and type query in the web search box (up right corner).

    Since most of people come to Yahoo properties to browse content rather than search, we have decided to load this feature after the page get loaded.

    For travel module, you can try the major cities like Las Vegas, New York.

    Linda

    Posted by: Linda wang | December 2nd, 2009 11:47 am

  5. There is no doubt that Yahoo Search Engine has been improved a lot and now they assist end users to select popular keyword. As soon as we type a keyword, Yahoo display and suggest related keywords in drop down form.

    Posted by: Cloud Cmputing Services | December 4th, 2009 4:16 am

  6. Why don’t you fix the Yahoo Group message Search feature? This is just ridiculous. If you are not fixing the Yahoo Group message search feature then just delete ALL Yahoo groups. Sick of waiting.

    Posted by: yahoogroupsearch | December 9th, 2009 8:40 am

  7. I love search assist…Can you sell it to Google? I wish Google had it.

    Posted by: Andrew | December 12th, 2009 6:27 pm

  8. this was a very interesting post im sending this to all my friends

    Posted by: we energies | January 13th, 2010 11:32 am

  9. Doesnt google automatically have search assist as well?

    Posted by: ipodmovies | January 23rd, 2010 11:05 am

  10. Nonetheless, i love this feature. Makes searching a lot easier and more efficient. I also like how it gives you the options to turn it on or off. Well done!

    Posted by: ipodmovies | January 23rd, 2010 11:05 am

  11. Good enough feature for now, but I hear that a Yahoo!-affiliated team is already working on the next level. I can’t wait!

    Posted by: California Blogger | February 10th, 2010 3:03 am

  12. I like this feature!

    Posted by: AKHMAD SUDRAJAT | May 22nd, 2010 10:51 pm

  13. I agree- Yahoo literally outperforms Google on this one!

    Posted by: Hardwood Flooring In Charlotte | May 25th, 2010 4:20 pm

Leave a Reply