We’re making Search more intuitive by taking user context and applying it to the search experience. Today we are introducing an enhanced Yahoo! Search Assist, providing suggestions geographically closer to you as you type your query. 

Sitting here in our Yahoo! headquarters at Sunnyvale, if I type “santa” from Yahoo! headquarters in Sunnyvale, California,  I get “santa clara county” as the first suggestion.

If I type the same query from my friend’s place in Santa Barbara, I get “santa barbara” as the first suggestion.

 Here’s another example that commuters in the New York and Pittsburgh metropolitan areas will appreciate: As I type “port au” from the New York area, I get “port authority bus terminal” and suggestions prioritized for New York’s Port Authority.

 But if I’m in the Pittsburgh area, I’ll see more locally relevant suggestions like “pittsburgh port authority” and “port authority of allegheny county.”

Yahoo! Search Assist helps you find what you need with fewer keystrokes by taking into account the location from which you’re searching.

Give this new feature a try and let us know what you think about geo-sensitive search suggestions in the comments section below.

Vivian Lin Dufour                                                                
Product Manager, Yahoo! Search

The US Open is heating up on Yahoo! Search. This week we are launching the US Open Shortcut to help you find the information you want when you search for the championships.

Whether you’re a dedicated fan or just want to check out Maria Sharapova’s outfit, simply search for ‘US Open’ or your favorite player. You will find real-time scores and schedule of the day, news, photos and tweets. Did you know many tennis players love to tweet?

This is an exciting time for tennis fans: for the number one seed Rafael Nadal, who has never won the US open title, this can be finally his year. Or could the winner be Roger Federer, who won last week in Cincinati, his first title in seven months?

No matter who you’re rooting for, we hope you’ll use our Shortcut to follow coverage of the US Open.

Yuko Kamae
Yahoo! Search

We’ve recently enhanced Yahoo! Search Assist to provide near real-time suggestions as you type your query.

You probably already use Yahoo! Search Assist to conduct your searches quickly, but now you can get even fresher suggestions, which will be especially useful when there are recent top news or events related to your search topic. With the new suggestion algorithm we’ve launched, you will see near real-time suggestions to help you easily find the freshest content.

For example, I was wondering which team the Netherlands would be matched with in the World Cup today, so I typed “Netherlands vs.”, and the first suggestion is for today’s game. Clicking on the first suggestion, I was able to see game information right in the search result page.

You can also find near real-time suggestions in Yahoo! News Search. Again, when you type “netherlands” in Yahoo! News Search, you will see today’s match — “netherland vs brazil” as the first suggestion. This functionality helps you find the most timely information quickly.

We hope the near real-time Search Assist feature helps you find the latest information about your query and enhances your search experience. Give it a try on Yahoo! Search and then give us your feedback or ask questions in the comments below.

Linda Wang
Senior Product Manager
Yahoo! Search

As we promised last month, we are launching Shortcuts that give you upcoming schedules for a specific team, group or match. Try searching for “worldcup schedule”, “Slovenia vs US schedule”, “brazil soccer” and “group B schedule” and get the schedule you’re looking for right on the Yahoo! Search results page.

You can easily access scores, photo gallery, new videos, and latest news from these Shortcuts. You can also see the team page and the match page where you can get the stats and the details about each team and match.

Of course, we will keep bringing more videos and news coverage through the general World Cup Shortcut (just go to Yahoo! Search and type “world cup” to see the shortcut). Since its launch less than a month ago, we’ve already seen 150% increase in search volume for World Cup topics, and a 25% increase in engagement with the World Cup shortcut on our Search results pages.

So give the World Cup Schedule shortcuts a try and search for your favorite team, group, or a match.

Yuko Kamae
Yahoo! Search

We’ve enhanced search suggestion in Web search for Yahoo! Taiwan (Yahoo! Kimo) and Yahoo! Hong Kong. This feature helps users easily enter queries in traditional Chinese in the search box using Changjie and Cantonese Pinyin, which are language input systems used in Taiwan and Hong Kong, respectively.

Instead of having to switch the language input method from English mode to Chinese mode, taking several clicks, this new search suggestion feature allows users to enter the phonetic representation of a Chinese query while still in English mode. This saves key strokes and makes using Yahoo! Search more convenient for our Chinese-language users.

For example, to search for “Shanghai World’s Fair,” searchers can start typing the Cantonese spelling of the query while in English mode and see search suggestion in traditional Chinese.

In February, we made this enhancement with the Zhuyin system in Taiwan. The Zhuyin and Changjie systems are now available in Search Assist for Yahoo! Taiwan users. The Changjie and Cantonese Pinyin systems are available in Search Assist for Yahoo! Hong Kong users.

With today’s enhancement, we are continuing our focus on the needs of international markets and features that are useful for non-English users.

James Ying, Product Manager, Yahoo! Search

Are you ready for soccer fever? In a few weeks, just about the whole world will be wrapped up in one of the biggest global sports event: the FIFA World Cup 2010 in South Africa. Many of the games happen during the week when you might be stuck at work or school, but don’t fret: you can follow this exciting and emotional journey of international sportsmanship with our World Cup coverage shortcuts and toolbar on Yahoo! Search.

Get World Cup Schedule, Scores and News with Yahoo! Shortcuts

We’ve created some handy Shortcuts so you can keep up to date with match scores and World Cup news from Yahoo! Sports and elsewhere across the web. Simply type ‘World Cup’ in Yahoo! Search and you’ll see scores, schedules, photos, and videos in the shortcut:

After the games kick into high gear, we’ll be launching Shortcuts that give you schedules and scores for specific team, group or match.  The Shortcut features will be available in 27 Yahoo sites globally. Type the name of the country, group, or match, and you will see shortcuts that look like these mock screenshots below.

Get World Cup Coverage on Yahoo! Toolbar

To give you more World Cup coverage at your fingertips, the Yahoo! Toolbar team just rolled out new features that let you show your team pride, and follow all of the latest soccer news. You can dress your toolbar in the colors and flag of your favorite team, search for your favorite team or play, and once the tournament begins we’ll have previews, live scores, and post-game wrap ups for every game. You also get live soccer news headlines right in your browser. Try out the toolbar with World Cup coverage here.

We just launched this in the U.S. and will be releasing it in 12 more countries throughout the month of May.

Click to enlarge

Click the drop-down button on the toolbar to see a list of upcoming games and news.

We know that the World Cup isn’t just a series of soccer games. In the words of U2 front man Bono, the World Cup “closes the schools, closes the shops, closes a city and stops a war.” So go ahead and give our shortcuts and toolbar a try as you follow the coverage of this much-anticipated event.

All together now: “Goooooooal!”

Joseph Bou-Younes 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

The Yahoo! Search BOSS team attended the Alt Search Engines conference in San Francisco earlier this week, and we came away from the conference even more convinced that there’s still a lot of room for innovation in search.  We saw dozens of demos of search engines in various stages of development, many of which use BOSS technologies as part of their approach.

We saw four major opportunities that search entrepreneurs are pursuing:

1)    Vertical Search – Whether it be image, video, health, or even green search, dozens of entrepreneurs are working on building highly focused vertical search engines.

2)    Semantic Search – A group of promising start-ups are focused on using natural language processing or other approaches to build search engines that can understand and respond to the actual meaning of a query.

3)    Discovery Engines – A handful of search engines, such as Kosmix and Worio, are working on building engines that integrate structured data from high quality sources to present users with a starting point to discover the best content on a given topic.

4)    New Presentation Models – Many search entrepreneurs are working on new ways to present search results, by changing the visual presentation or by clustering by topic or data source.

Bill Michels, GM of BOSS, gave a quick overview of BOSS and where we see opportunities to provide technology to the growing search ecosystem. See his presentation on SlideShare:

Big thanks to Alt Search Engines for providing a venue for collaboration and learning.  Keep up the great work, search entrepreneurs!

Graham Mudd
Yahoo! Search BOSS

Today, we are introducing instant visual results under the search box for the Yahoo! optimized version of the new Internet Explorer 8. Instant visual results are rolling out in three categories: Weather, Movie Reviews and Showtimes, and Stock Quotes.

When you type a query from any of these three categories in Internet Explorer 8, instant visual results will appear with related information. For example, when you search for “weather Santa Clara, CA,” a three-day weather forecast for the area appears right below the search box.

Try searching for the following examples to see for yourself:

• “Yhoo” or “Quote Yahoo”

Instant visual results display the current stock chart for Yahoo!.

• “Movie Taken”

See movie synopsis and critic/user ratings.

• “Movie Slumdog Millionaire Santa Clara, CA”

See local show times, synopsis, and ratings.

Users will also continue to get instant text suggestions below the visual suggestions with Yahoo! Search Assist.

Download a Yahoo! optimized version of Internet Explorer 8 to check out this new feature. We plan to expand the list of visual search suggestions so please let us know what you think in the comments section below.

Rajiv Thondanoor
Yahoo! 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