Thank you, that will be both fun and a timesaver - will post this on some SEO Blogs.

Good, but at least you could have told where the inspiration came from (http://www.yubnub.org/ by any chance ?)
Oh, and at least, if you do copy them, do it in full i.e. make the shortcuts shareable....

Yea! I get to create a define: function so that it can go to dictionary.com and check spelling and definition. Very happy!

I'm going to play Devil's Advocate here. Clearly, these shortcuts are helpful. But shouldn't this be the same as an "I'm feeling lucky" / take-me-to-first-result button along with a similar search phrase?

So if Yahoo *needs* these shortcuts to make these queries work better, isn't that proof that the ordinary SERPs aren't relevant enough? After all, I'd expect a normal search of "ebay lamps" (sans quotes) to bring up a first result of a URL searching for lamps on ebay. Ditto "wiki rozier".

So if these shortcuts are necessary, that seems to tell me Yahoo is less confident in its organic SERPs.

Clearly, the one-click-to-get-there ability is helpful - and bypassing the advertisements along the way is also nice - but a button a la Google's lucky one would do that trick. Also, quick ways to email / My Yahoo are also helpful, but I'm not sure if it helps the interface for the user to try to do *everything* from the search box.

These shortcuts are wonderful, and I intend to use them ... but I wonder if this shows a sypmtom of deeper flaws. I only say so because I want Y! to be better than G ... G's just getting too big.

I have alsi seen this in the site http://www.yubnub.org/

Brandon, I don't think your points are all that valid. My main reason is that the open shortcut takes you to content that will NEVER be on an SRP, period. If you're searching for lamps on eBay, it's better to go directly to eBay, period, and you won't have as good an experience using the SRP of ANY search engine.

To see my point, enter "ebay lamps" in any search engine, Google included. Tell me how that's as useful as entering "!ebay lamps". This product addresses navigational queries, which are totally orthogonal to the standard informational queries that search engines are designed to address.

I already had a couple of these set up in IE and Firefox, but now I can bring it anywhere with me. Good stuff.

Very useful. Just one question. Is there a key shortcut to take me directly to the firefox yahoo search box? That way I don't have to click my mouse to get to my yahoo bookmark?

Wrote a small review and comparison to Yubnub.org and Ambedo.com that might be of interest to some readers, see the blog at Ambedo.com. Yahoo's system doesn't allow a link directly to Blogspot here!

Very useful. Just one question. Is there a key shortcut to take me directly to the firefox yahoo search box? That way I don't have to click my mouse to get to my yahoo bookmark?

If your'e talking about the built-in search box in Firefox, I use CTRL+L followed by TAB to get there. There may be a faster way, of course...

I have a search time-saver --

Check out this google/blog/wikipeda all-in-one search thingy I put together: www.blinkpop.com

>> If your'e talking about the built-in search box
>> in Firefox, I use CTRL+L followed by TAB

or you can use Ctrl + K

Heh. You win.

Now I need to train my fingers on that one.

To Brandon

I actually have used "wiki xyz" and "ebay abc" to look for stuff using yahoo's search engine and almost always get the result but I think !wiki xyz is an improvement over wiki xyz, in that it insures you'll get the result always instead of mostly.

I still think http://www.songfacts.com/search_fact.php?title=A+whiter+shade+of+pale&-Nothing.x=0&-Nothing.y=0
looks better than
http://myweb2.search.yahoo.com/search?ei=UTF-8&p=songfacts+A+whiter+shade+of+pale

Even though in both the cases the first result is the answer.

Normally I add search engines to my browser (Opera) but I do not want a big list and for search services that I do not use much, it is certainly a better thing to add shortcuts to my default search engine.

Though I think Yahoo! can do better by making it easier to add custom shortcut. Ask people to search for (for example) Yahoo! and copy and paste the url into a box that will create the !shortcut

...forgot to add the first link comes from searching (my custom shortcut) -
!sf A whiter shade of pale
and the second from -
songfacts A whiter shade of pale

I agree with others that a FAQ entry acknowledging that a similar idea was implemented first by YubNub (optionally also telling that you're not related to them; or that you are different because such and such reason) ... would be the right thing to do.

I think this is a nice thing
by doing this one can decrease the
use of the browser very quickly
thanks
Myblog http://www.alieneyes.uni.cc

What would save me some time would be to have a "next page" and "previous page" button on My Yahoo where I can scroll through all of my pages of RSS feeds quickly. Right now, I need to select each page by using the drop-down list. C'est passe mon frere!

To Whom it may concern: I'm having problem downloading music video's.

I think you definitely need to define two more for a dictionary search and a thesaurus search. I travel a lot and I frequently use kiosks to send emails. If I have the Yahoo! page in the background, then I can quickly look up definitions.

shortcut:dict worng
shortcut:thes good

Should of never created shortcuts, your customers paying for advertisment will wonder what the hell am i paying yahoo for! this i would think would cut off a lot of your revenue for yahoo! it sounds like a good idea but you also have to be careful when it could attack the customers that depend on yahoo to get somone to see there ads and yahoo's structure itself could be then in danger! in short your allowing customers to bypass business, in wich now they probally will never see! is that good? not hardly. great idea but will hurt yahoo's adertising dollars greatly and the hurt the businesses that depend on their ads being found! got to look at the big picture yahoo! i should be on your payroll as a consaultant to make sure mistakes like this never happen!