Music is an integral part of everyday life. Since launching a partnership with Rhapsody in September 2008 and launching the FoxyPlayer last year, music has been an integral part of the Yahoo! Search experience as well.

We have found that nearly 6 percent of all Yahoo! searches are music-related. Given the massive number of things people search for, we think it is pretty significant.  With enhancements that we’ve made to the search experience, we are seeing a 38 percent increase in Rhapsody enhanced results served in our SERP since July.

We’ve made it easier to find music videos, artist information, and play full length songs from within the search results page. This is just one of the many ways Yahoo! is enhancing the search experience for music lovers. With Search Assist, Search Monkey, and Yahoo! Shortcuts, you can discover even more relevant information about your favorite artist. Wonder what U2 is up to these days? Search for U2 and you’ll see images and videos, and hear full-length songs all in one place.

At Yahoo! Search, our goal is to give you a more personally relevant search experience.  We are also continuing our investment in structuring the Web to allow you to explore a “Web of things,” more than just a Web of pages. That includes helping you find and explore everything there is to know about your favorite music artists.  Whether you like to rock out to The Killers, dance it up to Beyonce, or secretly sing along to Miley Cyrus, you can find relevant information about these artists and explore their music right at your fingertips on Yahoo! Search.

Larry Cornett

Vice President, Consumer Products, Yahoo! Search

Today, we are launching an all-new Yahoo! Search experience that makes search more personally relevant. We tested the changes in August with a percentage of users, and now the new page is available to everyone. The new page is designed to help you easily find and explore the things that matter most to you. The Yahoo! Search team is delighted to demonstrate our commitment to innovate in search technology and deliver an amazing user experience.

Yahoo! has also just launched a number of major changes to our core products, which include a new Yahoo! homepage, improved Yahoo! Mail, high-quality video calling in Yahoo! Messenger, and a suite of new Yahoo! Mobile experiences. The new Yahoo! Search page design aligns the experience between our new homepage, mail, and the search results page. This delivers a dynamic, compelling, and integrated experience that better understands what you are looking for so you can get things done quickly on the Web.

Most importantly, we designed this new page framework so that we can introduce and experiment with new search applications and features faster than before. Today’s launch is just the beginning of innovations to come.

Key highlights:

• Intelligent Search Results – Allows you to explore results from key sites and narrow results using different types of SearchMonkey structured data. Over the past few months, even more enhanced results for product, local, entertainment, reference, social, and tech sites have been displayed automatically. With the new search page design, we have made it easier to see these riche results from an increasing number of sites.
• Feature-Rich Experience – Provides quick access to search features that make people’s online lives safer and easier, including Search Scan/SafeSearch (which helps protect you from viruses, spyware, and spam while you search) and Search Pad. Now it will be even easier to return to the research documents you have created while searching.
• Search Assist Expansion – With the new design, our powerful query assistance is still available directly below the search box, but we’ve also incorporated it into the left-hand column for quick access lower on the page, even when the Search Assist layer is hidden. You can use this column to easily explore and discover concepts related to your query. We have added Search Assist to the search box on every Yahoo! page in the U.S. with the launch of a new universal header.

Today we are also revamping our image search and video search results pages to present a consistent user experience. In the left-hand column on the image search results page, users can find an extension of the travel refiners that we introduced back in July, as well as celebrity and entertainment categories. When you search for celebs like “Matt Damon” or “Tina Fey,” Yahoo! Image Search will tap into the “web of objects” and present related people, movies, and TV shows in their appropriate categories.

Now, here’s the best part: Rather than building this new experience on top of our existing front-end technology, our talented engineering and design teams rebuilt much of the foundational markup/CSS/JavaScript for the SRP design and core functionality completely from scratch. This allowed us to get rid of old cruft and take advantage of quite a few new techniques and best practices, reducing core page weight and render complexity in the process.

Key points about performance:

• Improved total page load time – Even though the new design includes dozens of additional assistance features and graphical assets, we are seeing faster page loading time and significant speed improvements.
• Improved perceived load time – In addition to reducing the weight of the page, we also greatly reduced the perceived load time by sending the page in three semantically meaningful chunks: first the search box and page header, then the rest of the visible content, and finally JavaScript for rich behavior.
• Inline data URI images – We’re taking advantage of specialized techniques for modern browsers such as inline data URI images, which we use to generate our subtle repeating gradients. This improves perceived and real performance dramatically. For legacy browsers, we provide the same gradients with traditional image sprites.

What does this all mean for you? Quite simply, the new search page is faster because it was built with performance in mind from the start.

We’re thrilled to put the all-new Yahoo! Search results page in your hands today in the U.S., U.K., France, Spain, Mexico, and India. You can learn more by checking out a tour that explains all of the features of this new experience. Please let us know what you think in the comments section below. Over the coming months, we will continue to deliver even more enhancements to this new experience, so be sure to check in often to see what we’re up to!

Larry Cornett

Vice President, Consumer Products, Yahoo! Search

Click to play demo
We know that search has been a hot topic over the past few weeks, so we wanted to share with you what the Yahoo! Search team has been focusing on lately. Today, we are announcing a new search page design that makes search more personally relevant and helps people explore the things that matter most to them. It exemplifies how Yahoo! is continuing to innovate in search technology and the user experience.

A few weeks ago, Yahoo! began rolling out a new homepage that is tailored to your interests. You may also have noticed that the Yahoo! Search team began testing a new design that will unify the experience between the new homepage and our search results page. We’ve been doing a lot of research such as usability experiments and eye-tracking research so that we can bring you a more personally relevant search experience that better understands what you’re looking for and helps you get things done quickly on the Web.

Unified Design

One of the designs we have been testing aligns the page framework and design with the new Yahoo! Homepage. Not only does this create a more integrated Yahoo! product experience, it also provides quick access to valuable search-specific applications and features in the left-hand column. For example, the section titled “Show Results From” helps people explore the results that matter most to them through sites they know and love.

Quick Access to Search Features

About a month ago, we launched a great new note-taking application called Search Pad.  In our new search page design, you have even easier access to the research you’ve been doing right at the top of the left column. In addition, we have integrated the SearchScan and Safe Search feature settings on the left column so you can more easily manage your protection from viruses, spyware, and spam while you search.

Enhancing Search Assistance

Our search assistance features are still the most sophisticated query assistance technologies on the Web. With the new design, assistance is still easily available directly below the search box where you need it most.

In addition, we are also testing ways to allow you to explore results through the “Related Concepts” section in the left column even when the Search Assist layer is hidden.

SearchMonkey

We recently celebrated the one-year anniversary of SearchMonkey. Over the past months, we have been driving efforts toward increasing structured data on the Web, more uses for existing structured data, and easier ways to display enhanced results for some data types. With the new search page design, we will be making it even easier to see richer results from an increasing number of sites. For example, you can easily show all of the enhanced results from Wikipedia on the new search page.

We’re testing the new Yahoo! Search results page with a percentage of our U.S. visitors chosen at random, so you may be one of the few who get a chance to try it out. Please let us know what you think in the comments section below. Over the next few weeks, we will be adding more new features during these tests. Be sure to check in often to see what we’re up to!

Larry Cornett

Vice President, Consumer Products, Yahoo! Search

Today we are rolling out several enhancements to Delicious that make it easier to find your bookmarks with our improved search tools, to see the freshest bookmarks on the Web, and to share bookmarks with your friends.

• New Delicious Search Tools
Many Delicious users have hundreds or thousands of bookmarks. To make finding your bookmarks easier, we’ve created new search tools with advanced timeline and tag filtering controls so that you can search within a given date range or filter the results by tag. We’ve also enhanced the search results page to display rich content including YouTube videos with inline playback, Flickr images, and Yelp local data when applicable.

Click to enlarge image

• Fresh Bookmarks on Delicious.com
Want to see the latest sites that people are saving and talking about? We’ve created the Fresh Bookmarks tab on the Delicious homepage to show the most recently saved Delicious bookmarks that are buzzing on Twitter. We combine the latest actions on Delicious and popular discussions on Twitter to bring you the best and freshest links about technology, web, politics, and media. (See the Delicious blog to learn more).

• Email and Tweet Bookmarks
When you save a bookmark from Delicious (using our Firefox extension or bookmarklets), instead of copying and pasting URLs into emails or Twitter updates, you can now email or tweet your bookmark directly from Delicious. These options are visible when you add recipients in the Send field.

We hope you give these new Delicious enhancements a try. Let us know what you think in the Comments section below.

Ariel Seidman | delicious.com/aseidman | twitter.com/aseidman
Director, Product Management

Many of you are probably already familiar with the Yahoo! Shortcut that appears at the top of the Yahoo! Search results page when you search for a local business,.  Starting today, we’re enhancing the Yahoo! Shortcut for local businesses to include links to information you care about most and an overlay that displays content directly on the search results page.

For example, if you conduct a search on a business, such as “Coupa Café Palo Alto,” you will see the following Shortcut:

You can now see a selection of images and reviews for the business directly on the search results page by clicking the “Reviews” and “Photos” tabs on the Shortcut, saving you time and giving you the information you need in one place:

We’ve enhanced the Shortcut for category searches too, for when you are searching for a type of business and don’t have a specific business name in mind. For example, when you search “sushi palo alto,” you’ll see a list of sushi restaurants in Palo Alto in the Shortcut, which again pulls content directly onto the page to help you decide where to go:

The local enhanced Shortcut brings the most relevant information from across the Web so you can find what you need in one place. It is also a part of our continuing effort to better understand query intent – what users mean in their queries – and to match it with the right content. About 20 percent of online searches have a local intent, where users are looking for businesses, organizations, events, and other information in a specific geographic area. Not only does this enhanced Shortcut make your time online more efficient, but it also helps you make the best use of your time when you’re off the Internet.

So give the local enhanced shortcut a try – remember that you can always find local business information by searching by city (”giordanos chicago“) or by zip code (”florist 94041“).  Let us know what you think.

Nitzan Achsaf

Sr. Product Manager, Yahoo! Search

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

People have been clamoring to get their hands on Search Pad since we showed a demo video earlier this year. Today we are rolling out Search Pad to the public so you can see for yourself how it can help you organize research on the Web.

Search Pad helps you track sites and make notes by intelligently detecting user research intent and automatically collecting sites the user visits. Search Pad turns on automatically when you’re doing research, tracking sites to make document authoring a snap. You can then quickly edit and organize your notes with the Search Pad interface, which includes drag-and-drop functionality and auto-attributed pasting.

For example, if you are planning a trip to Durango, Colo., Search Pad detects your research intent and asks if you’d like to take notes. Search Pad then saves the sites you’ve visited, like the tourism office or a day spa you’re headed to, and lets you take more notes on the information you’ve found.

You can save your documents using your Yahoo! ID so you can access your documents from anywhere on the Web.  This helps you save any research you’ve done so you needn’t do the same searches over and over again.

After you’ve done your research, you can publish your document to a permanent URL to share with friends and family so they can check out your trip itinerary and chime in with tips. Using Search Pad, you can share research on that new digital camera that you are checking out, things to do this weekend, or any other research you might do on the Web. You can even share Search Pad documents on Facebook, Twitter, or Delicious.

Search Pad can help you save your work across an entire session or even multiple sessions. Our intent detection allows us to offer Search Pad during sessions where it is most needed, and stay out of the way when it’s not. Of course, you can also opt to use Search Pad directly at any point during your research.

At Yahoo!, we’re always looking for ways to innovate in search by challenging the model that search is just about a keyword and 10 blue links. We are constantly improving our technology and experience in ways that people need most — Search Pad is just the latest result of those efforts.

Search Pad goes live today in the U.S., Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Singapore, Malaysia, Philippines, United Kingdom, France, Spain, Italy, Germany, Brazil, Mexico, and Argentina.  See for yourself how Search Pad can help you save time, share information easily, and make the hardest search research tasks more manageable.  Give it a try. We look forward to hearing your feedback.

Tom Chi

Senior Director of Product Management, Yahoo! Search

Yahoo! Search logs gave a revealing picture of what the King of Pop evokes for people as they mourned his passing today. Starting last night, searches for his legendary music surged. “Thriller,” “Man in the Mirror,” and “Billie Jean” were among the top lyrics, songs, and videos that people looked for on Yahoo! Search. As details of Jackson’s death emerge, searchers are looking for details on prescription drugs including Demerol, the hospital Jackson was taken to after he collapsed (UCLA Medical Center), and other lingering questions (”why did Michael Jackson die”).

Details of Jackson’s controversial and sometimes disturbing life emerged again in Yahoo! search data as we saw searches for “Michael Jackson plastic surgery”, photos of the singer, and “was Michael Jackson abused as a child.”

Jackson’s death set multiple records across Yahoo!. Our front page story “Michael Jackson Rushed to Hospital” was the highest clicked story in our history, and Yahoo! News saw an all-time record in unique visitors yesterday. Yodel Anecdotal’s post on losing Michael Jackson captures even more details on how the online world reacted to his death.

As fans continue to flood the Internet with questions, we’ll keep being the source for memories, pictures, and news about the untimely death of the King of Pop.

Yahoo! Search

An enthusiastic group of data geeks and Semantic Web enthusiasts met last week at our Sunnyvale headquarters where we hosted the latest edition of VoCamp. VoCamps are a series of informal events that provide a small setting where the Semantic Web community can discuss issues related to semantic interoperability and creating, managing, and publishing vocabularies.

The format of VoCamp was conceived by Talis’ Tom Heath and Yahoo!’s Peter Mika, with the first installment organized in Oxford, England, in September, 2008. Since then, VoCamps have grown into a real movement, with events organized in Galway, Ireland; Austin, Texas.; Ibiza, Spain; and Washington, D.C., with more planned in New York and Bristol, England.

In Sunnyvale, we spent the first afternoon discussing three broad issues: ways of finding vocabularies on the Semantic Web, tools for mapping vocabularies and executing data transformations, and methods for lifting relational databases into the RDF world. Over pastries and pizza the next day, the campers worked in small groups on more specialized topics, including creating methodologies for vocabulary development, and developing a microformat for code documentation. (Many thanks to the microformat admins Tantek Çelik, Kevin Marks, and Ben Ward for bringing their perspectives to this discussion.) Other topics discussed included the Common Tag format and vocabulary visualization.

As Yahoo! Search moves toward a Web of Objects, we know that the developer community will be a critical component for creating a more robust Semantic Web. We were proud to play host to VoCamp Sunnyvale and look forward to future VoCamp gatherings.

Yahoo! Search

The new Yahoo! Toolbar, already available on Internet Explorer, is now available on Firefox (beta) to make it easier for you to keep on top of your online world. You can get helpful suggestions in the search box in the Yahoo! Toolbar and jump right to search results on sites like Flickr, Wikipedia, and more. You can also preview sites and customize the toolbar with cool apps.

To get started using the Yahoo! Toolbar, download it at toolbar.yahoo.com. Check out today’s post on Yodel Anecdotal to see more details.

Yahoo! Search