Wondering what kinds of pictures and videos people are checking out right now? We’ve redesigned the Yahoo! Image and Video search home pages for a visual snapshot of the most popular trending topics that people are looking for in Yahoo! Search.

With both video and image search, we are featuring up to five pages of topics that are trending in search. You can scroll through the pages or turn on autoscroll to watch the search trends of the moment.

Find today’s top trending image searches on the Yahoo! Image search home page:

Or go to the Yahoo! Video search home page and see the latest trends in video:

Already, we’ve seen double-digit percentage increases in engagement for both image and video search since launching these new homepages, with a 60% increase in time spent on the image search homepage.

Now you have another way to get a quick picture of what’s happening around the search world, from World Cup to Dancing with the Stars. This is just the start of a set of changes we’ll be making to help you find the information you’re looking for. So come back to Yahoo! Image and Video Search often and see what we’re up to.

Anuj Sahai and Sriram J. Sathish (Thiru)
Yahoo! Image Search

At Yahoo! Search, we pay attention to what’s popular on the Web and what matters most to you. We know that celebrities rank near the top of the buzziest searches on Yahoo!, so this is one area in search that we’ve been working on to make even better. As we’ve already started to do with news, local, sports, music and movies searches, we want to make your pop culture search results more useful.  Now you can find photos, videos, news and other interesting information right on top of our Search results page, without digging through all 10 blue links.

Our brilliant scientists are working hard behind the scenes to uncover the relevant details and content hidden in the billions of pages on the Web. What this means is that we can surface the nuggets scattered across what we call the “Web of Things” to show you the stuff that matters to you, right on your Search results page. Our aim is to save you many clicks and a lot of time, while creating a fun way to conduct searches for related topics of interest.

For entertainment junkies, there is all kinds of great information we can find for you in our rich Search results. For example, if you’re a TV fan looking for details on your favorite show we just launched a new TV shortcut that will display the latest video clips, bonus videos (or even entire episodes), episodes list, ratings, show times from Yahoo! TV, and photos – all with just one click from the Search results page.

On the left side of the page, we show suggestions of related celebrities, movies or TV shows related to your entertainment queries. Check out the search results for “Days of our Lives” actor Jensen Ackles. If you click on Ackles’ result, we’ll show you a brand new rich shortcut with photos, videos and tweets about him. Plus you’ll get new suggestions to explore more Search results for his co-stars, like Jessica Alba and Orlando Bloom, or some of the movies he’s been in.

Click on Orlando Bloom and you’ll see that the new Celebrity shortcut brings up news, along with his photos, videos and tweets.

So go on and search for your favorite entertainment topics on Yahoo! We are curious to know what you think!

P.S. If your favorite celebrity has an official Twitter feed, you can see their tweets right on the search results page! This way, you won’t miss a minute of their lives.

P.P.S. We’re also now showing enhanced shortcuts for a broader range of movies and music to include even more of your favorite stuff. Take a look at our search results for music artist Tommy Emmanuel or the movie Pretty Woman.

Alexandra Levich and Yuko Kamae

Yahoo! Search

Continuing our celebration of the Academy Awards, we are rolling out a series of features that make it easier for you to follow coverage of the Oscars on Yahoo! Search.

On Yahoo! Image Search, just search for “Oscars 2010” and you’ll see our Oscars image carousel, with the latest image search results of the nominees and photos of the event. While counting down to the big night, you can easily search for snapshots from the film Inglourious Basterds or photos of nominees like Meryl Streep. You’ll see Oscars-related image results for these films and actors in the Oscars image refiner on the left hand side of the page. On Oscar night, use Yahoo! Image Search to see Penelope Cruz’s gown, George Clooney’s always-dapper suit, and other best- and worst-dressed celebs as they make their way down the red carpet.

This year, we are also giving you a quick and easy way to see the list of nominees and winners from the Web search results page. To see the nominees, just search for “Oscars” or “Academy Awards” on Yahoo! Search and you’ll see a list of nomination categories for the awards. Simply click any of the categories to see the full list of nominees.  We’ll be updating the results as soon as the winners are announced on Sunday night, so you can use the same queries and see the list of winners directly on the search results page.

Want more? We have video coverage of the Oscars too! If you didn’t catch the nominated flicks in the theater, check out the trailers of the nominated films on Yahoo! Video Search. Search for “Oscars” on Yahoo! Video Search and you’ll see that we’ve categorized the trailers on the left hand side of the page by award categories, actor interviews, speeches, and more. After the Oscars, search for the names of the winners to find updates results.

With these new ways of exploring the Academy Awards, we hope you enjoy your “front row” access to the Oscars coverage from beginning to end!

Yahoo! Search, Yahoo! Image Search, and Yahoo! Video Search Teams

We know that many of you come to Yahoo! Video search to find entertainment-related information. Our video search traffic also shows us that many of those queries have an exploratory intent, including digging for great work from your favorite music artists.

Starting today, you can easily dive into albums and songs by your favorite music artist in Yahoo! Video Search. We have hooked into the “Web of Things” to intelligently extract the most popular albums and songs for artist or band queries. This feature lets you explore music artists intuitively and easily.

For instance, say you are looking for music videos from U2. The new video search music refiner on the left rail shows popular albums, such as The Joshua Tree, and top songs, such as “Beautiful Day.”

Click on an album or song, and Yahoo! Video Search shows videos for the album or song in an overlay page.

For example, when you click on The Joshua Tree on the left rail, you will see videos of the album’s tops songs, including “I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For” and “With or Without You.”

This is a great way to watch popular song videos from an album without losing the context of your original query.

For the video search music refiner, we tapped further into the Web of Things to give you a more personally relevant search experience. You’ve seen the image search travel refiner and the celebrity refiner – now you can give the video search music refiner a try.

Manish Sharma and Ishwar Sridharan

Yahoo! Video Search

We know that users want instant gratification when searching for videos – you want to be able to watch the videos as soon as you find it. So today, we’re introducing a larger inline video play feature that shows the videos directly on the video search results page.

Some videos on the results page will display a “Play Now” link, which opens a large overlay window and plays the video on the results page. Users can watch part or all of the video, then close the window and resume browsing search results.

We are also embedding videos related to the one you are watching in the in-line video player window. Just click any thumbnail in the Related Video section and the video will start playing in the open in-line player window.

Give it a try and let us know what you think!

Manish Mohan Sharma and Sapna Chandiramani
Yahoo! Video Search Team

What are some of the must-sees in Barcelona? What are the most popular landmarks in San Francisco? Whether you are an armchair traveler or avid globetrotter, you can now take a virtual tour of popular points of interest when you search for a destination in Yahoo! Image Search. With the new travel image refiner, we are continuing our focus on satisfying user intent through a deeper understanding the Web and presenting related objects from the real world. The travel image refiner taps into this “Web of Objects” and lets you explore these popular points of interest, giving you more contextual information about your destination.

Let’s say you are planning your first trip to Rome. The new travel image refiner shows categories for popular destinations such as the Colosseum, Pantheon, and Trevi Fountain.

Click on the Pantheon tab and you will see an overlay of images so you can virtually tour image results for this ancient temple without leaving your original search results page. You can explore any of the popular places to visit in Rome and use the many images you have at your fingertips to help you decide where to go.

Even if you’re not planning on hopping on a plane soon, you can use the travel image refiner to find out more about a place you’ve heard about. Or you can use it to check out how your hometown has changed by delving into images from some of your favorite places in town.

The Yahoo! Image Search refiner is currently available for location-specific searches, but we are planning to expand this capability to other types of image searches as well. In the meantime, explore aspects of cities like Las Vegas or find pics of a major tourist destination, like Barcelona. We would love to hear what you think!

Yahoo! Image Search Team

Ramu Adapala, Anand Ramani, Sriram J. Satish, Borkur Sigurbjornsson, and Roelof van Zwol

Finding a great image online elicits a little thrill, but it can be tricky – if you’re looking for a pic to pop into a presentation or illustrate a Web page, you need to know if you’re allowed to use that photo, and how you can use it. Today, Yahoo! Image Search is launching a Creative Commons license filter that allows you to simply and quickly find images that are available for reuse.

When you use Yahoo! Image Search, you’ll now see a checkbox for Creative Commons allowing you to filter for images from Flickr that can be used commercially or that can be modified (remixed, tweaked, or built upon) with restrictions set by the image’s creator.

We knew from our March blog post about the release of the Yahoo! Image Search filters that our community wanted an easy way to search for images that could be reused. By launching the Creative Commons license search with Flickr and making it available to all our Yahoo! Image Search users, we aim to promote reusable work and to be transparent about the guidelines issued by the creator of a particular image. We’re proud to be the first image search engine to offer this capability.

Try it and let us know what you think. We bet your next PowerPoint will be prettier than ever.

Polly Ng and Anuj Sahai
Yahoo! Image Search

We’ve revamped the Yahoo! Image Search preview page to make it a lot easier to use. Now, when you click on an image from the image search results page, the top bar opens to reveal a richer and sleeker interface that displays a larger view of the image, more search results, and popular related searches.

Our new image preview page features:
• A search box with search assistance to let you quickly and easily search for more images.
• More image search results (so you don’t have to hit the back button to see your other options).
• Suggestions based on queries from other users making similar searches.

New Image Search preview page:

Old Image Search preview page:

Try searching for images of beautiful sunsets, faraway places (Rome, anyone?), or hot celebs like Brad Pitt. Our new image search results preview page will help you find what you’re looking for – maybe you’ll even discover something new.

Anja Krombholz, Chris Kurian, and Polly Ng
Yahoo! Image Search

The array of images available on the Web can be both a great resource and a daunting challenge. So, based on recent user tests, The Yahoo! Image Search team built new filters to make searching for images on the Web easier and faster.

This new set of filters helps you find what you want quickly, whether you are looking for black and white photographs of flowers, a sunset wallpaper, or images on Flickr. With the new Image Search filters, you can narrow down image results by color or black and white, by size, or even by specifying dimensions for the image results. You can also choose whether the images come from Flickr.

These filters are just the first improvements we will be rolling out in the coming months for Image Search. Stay tuned for more features that will make finding what you’re looking for a breeze.

Anuj Sahai and Ramu Adapala
Yahoo! Image Search

The Oscars are one of our favorite times of year at Yahoo! Image Search. Our fascination with movies, celebrities, and red carpet fashion actually can be passed off as work! For the 81st Academy Awards, we are rolling out a new image carousel in Yahoo! Image Search so you can find some of the newest, most popular pictures from Yahoo!’s news and entertainment portals when you search for your favorite stars and Oscar moments.

To see the Oscars image carousel, search for the name of any nominated film or actor in Yahoo! Image Search. You’ll see a rolling gallery of the newest photos above the regular search results, with arrows to toggle through the images. And if you happen to miss any of the key moments on Sunday night, try searching for Oscars or Academy Awards after the show.

If you’ve got your own favorite nominees, check out Yahoo! Movies’ complete coverage of the Oscars, where you can follow the buzz and see what Yahoo! users have predicted for this year’s winners. So far, Yahoo! users have picked “Slumdog Millionaire” for best picture, Brad Pitt for best actor (in The Curious Case of Benjamin Button), and Kate Winslet for best actress (in “The Reader”). You can download a printable ballot and make your own bets too.

Join us as we prepare for the fun on Sunday night and enjoy the Oscars!

Yahoo! Image Search Team