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August 23, 2004

Search Tricks #1

Walking around the Campus is an interesting experience. It's located at the far end of the San Francisco bay with lots of trails for hiking and jogging. On one of the beautifully clear days, many folks keep thinking that it might be fun to go out and enjoy being outside.

Of course, we don't. I mean sure the sun is bright and shiny and all, but one of us got this really bad sun burn and...well, never mind, let's just say there's another reason that our various significant others have considered getting us vitamin A booster shots: we love what we're doing.

No doubt about it, search is pretty darn cool.

Despite what you may have read in some news sources, Yahoo! Search does indeed offer dictionary definitions and a search line calculator. Granted, we had the calculator tool for a while if you count the one that's in AllTheWeb, but it took a while to move it to the main search box. More than likely it was stuck in a moving box next to one of those carved coconut monkeys we bought on vacation in Orlando, but I digress.

To be honest, it's easy to miss because we never really blow a big horn about a lot of the things we have. Take, for instance, some of the hidden search tricks we can do. Most folks probably know about the stuff like you can search for content in specific file types (including Microsoft Powerpoint, and XML), and you probably know most of the shortcuts we're constantly adding to, but there are a few others that, well, we've been sorta keeping to ourselves.

One is the "s:" shortcut in Yahoo! Messenger. Let's say you're on line with your Dad who is planning on doing some shop work. He's got an old desk of yours that he wants to redo but, since you were a messy child, it's currently coated in stain resistant, latex paint. He's worried that sanding might be a problem. After a bit of discussion you decide to do some research, and enter in "s:latex remover" into the conversation window and you both get to see a number of results that might be helpful.

Another semi-hidden treasure we offer is the inurl: prefix. This is particularly useful if you want to search for something which happens to be on a shared server. A good example is ibiblio.org (previously known as sunsite). This is a fantastic resource loaded with all sorts of different goodies, one of which is a herbal reference site (so we can find a nice anti-rickets supplement). By specifying a search like: site:ibiblio.org inurl:herbmed rickets we get a bunch of articles detailing what we're looking for. And a mental note to stop by the cafe and pick up a few oranges.

No, none of these are perfect. Mostly because "perfect" depends entirely on the perception of the user. And for us, we're never really satisfied. There's always one new cool thing we'll try and add in because it's something we found pretty useful, and we'll keep plugging away until we think it's better.

Sure, we may be inside more often than we should, but it's mighty satisfying to walk out at the end of the day and take a deep breath knowing that we're doing something pretty cool, and give someone another tool to get to the info they want.

JR
Technical Yahoo!

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Comments

Very cool. That inurl: bit is very helpful, thanks.

Posted by: Hetta | August 23, 2004 12:05 PM

Some more cool Y! search tips:
http://www.researchbuzz.org/archives/001935.shtml

Posted by: JStrauss | August 23, 2004 12:22 PM

The search shortcuts for Yahoo are pretty cool, I also like being able to just add a ! to the end of a search to go straight to the Yahoo services
http://search.yahoo.com/search?p=mail!

Is it possible to have the dictionary definitions included as a link in the line along the top:
"Results 1 - 100 of about 121,000,000 for word." ?

That's just where I'm accustomed to having the dictionary rather than having to use special operators.

All in all though, you have done some very good work with Yahoo search.

Posted by: Rob | August 23, 2004 12:26 PM

Thanks JStrauss. I forgot to add that to the article. [insert self-inflicted dope slap here.]

Posted by: jr | August 23, 2004 12:58 PM

Wow! that's awesome, I love the tips...keep us make our life so easy

Posted by: Guillaume | August 23, 2004 01:09 PM

Almost everyone of your search tips have been mentioned over the past months (actually years) on ResourceShelf.com.

Here are a few more.

http://www.resourceshelf.com/2004/06/yahoo-adds-search-term-suggestions.html

http://www.resourceshelf.com/2004/05/more-search-shortcuts-from-yahoo.html

http://www.resourceshelf.com/2004/04/advanced-search-syntax-with-yahoo-news.html

Yahoo, the Exclamation Pohttp://www.resourceshelf.com/2003/04/exclamation-point-and-yahoo-search.htmlint, and Shortcuts

Posted by: fred | August 23, 2004 02:30 PM

Please include some search tips useful to writers who would like to perform research with Yahoo! Search. Less space wasted on bashing other search engines would be appreciated. Some SEO tactics to use with Yahoo! will also be a treat. Thank you.

Posted by: Georganna Hancock | August 23, 2004 03:14 PM

another cool trick is to use lucene or nutch to archive the results from a query (you know, the company that you gave money to in CA to help out with the internet archives project even though it's open source search..? that was a VERY cool thing for you guys to do, no joke...google would never have done that ;)

out of curiosity, do ANY of your ideas come from WOMEN???? i've noticed on your own labs.yahoo page that there are NO women involved in the scientific research group beyond a named admin...

Posted by: dave | August 23, 2004 05:03 PM

fred: Yep, and we're mighty thankful that they've got them. The more people who write about these things (and even better use them and give us feedback about it), the better.

dave: You bet. Labs is just one aspect of Yahoo!, but we get tons of great ideas from everyone. Fact is, everyone who works at Yahoo! is encouraged to offer ideas or suggestions (as well as comment on other folk's ideas).

Posted by: jr | August 23, 2004 05:38 PM

Nice tips. Your search crawler has been crawling thousands of pages for months, but this content is not searchable in any index.

When's the update, as the old adage goes?

Posted by: Kevin | August 23, 2004 05:43 PM

Those search shortcuts are great, but i doubt anybody would remember them all. Is there a way to put them in graphical format right there at the search site, so that one has a reminder when its needed?

Posted by: Dan | August 23, 2004 06:04 PM

Never knew some of those features existed. If this blog never came about I don't think anybody would know (except for hard core searchers using Yahoo).

You can get so lost in Yahoo sometimes.

Posted by: david | August 24, 2004 01:25 AM

I think Yahoo! Search has a lot of good features, but I also thinks you do need to make it more appearent to typical users.

Also, may be it's time for more intuitive search interface rather than the command line interface. I still remember DOS command prompts, but no one uses it anymore.

Posted by: Pinyo | August 24, 2004 08:00 AM

"Also, may be it's time for more intuitive search interface rather than the command line interface. I still remember DOS command prompts, but no one uses it anymore."

What do you have in mind?

Posted by: Guillaume | August 24, 2004 10:50 AM

"Some SEO tactics to use with Yahoo! will also be a treat."

people can misinterpret what they write and its a huge unnecissary liability for a search engine to offer SEO tips in a blog. \

Search engines will tell you that they want you to create content that is good for site visitors and structure the data so that it is easy to understand.

Beyond that they do not want to give specific info because the value of their algorithm is likely inversly proportional to how much people know about reverse engineering it.

Posted by: aaron wall | August 24, 2004 03:08 PM

Aaron:

Yes, I think I tried to make a similar point over a year ago:

http://jeremy.zawodny.com/blog/archives/000751.html

But that doesn't seem to stop folks from trying. To some people, the choice between "doing it the right way" and "getting the results I want" is chooosing between two *different* things. I don't think it always needs to be. But I'm also *not* in the SEO game. :-)

Posted by: Jeremy Zawodny | August 24, 2004 03:15 PM

I agree with dan: "Those search shortcuts are great... Is there a way to put them in graphical format?" and Pinyo: "you do need to make it more appearent to typical users. I also wish there was a way to access these features from the home page in a easier way."

On an (off topic) note - I use yahoo for news search now (over another search service) because it brings up more relevant results. But, the link isn't easy to find on the home page??

I'm glad theis blog is here as a source of news and tips. Thanks guys (and gals)

"Because There's a Bastard In All of Us"
The Mad Dater - A Dating Blog
http://themaddater.blogspot.com

Posted by: The Mad Dater | August 25, 2004 05:41 AM

Hmm.. I'm not sure how we could do a graphical version of some of these. Do you mean something like what we did with the Smartmaps stuff, or did you have something else in mind.

Also, one of the reasons we picked the shortcuts we did was because we thought they were natural words that folks might use and remember, like "pizza sunnyvale" or "San jose weather". There's also a link to the shortcuts appearing on every search result page.

Is there something you think would be better? Oh and thanks for your feedback! This is exactly why I love this blog.

Posted by: jr | August 25, 2004 09:01 AM

Just curious, do you have any cool search shortcuts for your new local search product?

Posted by: Rudy | August 25, 2004 04:57 PM

"Yahoo Search Team"

One feature I'm looking for is a
"YahooMeter"
What is the most common phrase
searched within Yahoo.
What kind of data is the most popular? ect

Ex:
A list with top 20 subject
and then the 10 hottest word/term
from each subject.

Regard's
amor omnia vincit

Posted by: Kimspitstop.dk | August 26, 2004 03:23 AM

Yahoo Buzz Index

Well, the buzz index can give a clue
combined with the knowledge from Overture,
but that would only be "paid search terms"
anyway not everybody search for popular person's, names ect.
So a more common buzz category would be appreciated!

Kind regards
Ps: Can see that the olympic is the overall topic around the globe not only on TV but also as an search term and the next would proberly bee XMAS
"what would peoble wish for X-mas"
Can Yahoo predict what kind of gift under the Xmas tree most peoble want :O) Just kidding

Posted by: Kimspitstop.dk | August 26, 2004 05:13 AM

Hate to mention opposition but have you seen soople.com which someone has cleverly spent time creating. How about someone doing the same for yahoo?

Posted by: rac | August 26, 2004 07:15 AM

Well what I personally have in mind in order to make the shortcuts easier to remenber would be a sort of drop down menu at the beginning of the search box,but I dunno if this is possible; for example

site:
define:
convert:
...

Or it could be some buttons to click on that would automatically enter the keywords of the entry in the search box. In this this sense, the shortcut Categoty table of this page http://tools.search.yahoo.com/shortcuts/ is intuitive...but i would have ONE search box on the page of course

Posted by: Anonymous | August 26, 2004 08:39 AM

Rudy: Just asked the local folks. Sorry, no hidden shortcuts are available. They spent most of their time getting things working. I guess we should give them a few weeks before we start pestering for cool add-ons. ;)

Posted by: jr | August 26, 2004 09:25 AM

Excellent post - a lot of this information is new to me. For the future, I would suggest an entry that deals with search relevance and how Yahoo!'s search capability is unique.

Posted by: tim | August 26, 2004 10:59 AM

JR: By graphical I, meant visual aid.

Hey searchers are lazy ( I guess this would be why there are so many studies that say people only look through the first 2 pages of a search) and I'm no different ( I only look through the first few and then refine my search - or god forbid use another search engine).

I don't know wheat it is - ther's so much info on the yahoo home page that your eyes just zone them out. (even the highlighted stuff) So you do a search and hope you find the info.

I wonder if you all have ever tested how much pwople know about your home page. Example: even though the CNN home page is filled with many things. I know where these things are and can probably draw from memory what the cnn page looks like. I couldn't tell you what's on the Yahoo page other than the search box. (I've memorized mail.yahoo.com - so that I don't have to look for it)

Hope this helps
"Because There's a Bastard In All of Us"
The Mad Dater - A Dating Blog
http://themaddater.blogspot.com

Posted by: The Mad Dater | August 27, 2004 05:05 AM

Ah, good, I was just being dense then, Mad. (May I call you Mad? ;) )

I know that there's great plans afoot for changing the top page (Nope, they won't tell me what they are) and we're always looking for suggestions. I'm definitely passing that along.

Posted by: jr | August 29, 2004 09:17 AM

dave wrote: out of curiosity, do ANY of your ideas come from WOMEN????

I know of at least one woman researcher at Yahoo Research Labs, Rosie Jones, Sr. Researcher in Algorithms:

http://research.yahoo.com/staff/algorithms/jonesr.xml

Posted by: Jeremy Leader | September 1, 2004 04:43 PM

A new search tool for Firefox users is the Firefox Toolbar for Yahoo.(yes, this is a shameless plug)

Http://www.firefoxtoolbar.com/yahoo

It searches all of the yahoo properties, including Launch.Yahoo. It also allows you to add/delete/change any engine you want.

Only for firefox. If you have IE,(get Firefox) use the yahoo companion.

thanks,
-Pat

Posted by: Pat McDonald | September 7, 2004 01:59 PM

This is excellent. I love it!

Posted by: Dan | February 27, 2005 03:07 PM