ITGumbo: spicing IT up

Yahoo Search Assist

The meat of Yahoo search’s new feature is the Search Assist. It’s a real-time query suggestion for users who may having a hard time thinking of what search term to use. The search assist help users refine their search by pulling down a list of suggested key words that complete the first few words that the users enter into the Yahoo search bar.

For example, when you type in “gumbo”, the Yahoo search engine will pull down possible search phrases containing the word “gumbo”. So, you’ll probably get suggested query term such as chicken gumbo, seafood gumbo, shrimp gumbo (sorry no IT Gumbo yet).

Improved search algorithm for multimedia content

Aside from the search assist, Yahoo also beefed up its search engine in to give more importance to multimedia search results. When a search is related to a multimedia content found such as a video from Yahoo, Yahoo’s search engine displays an inline video player where you can watch the video provided by the link.

So if you try searching for Radiohead, Yahoo search result would display an inline video featuring Radiohead’s mtv culled from the band’s official website.

And finally, the new Yahoo search also integrates the functionality of Flickr photo tags into the search results page. When a Flickr photo or tag shows up in your results, you get to see those great photos in addition to getting a link.

I’ve been playing around with Yahoo search for the past couple of hours trying out different searches and I could say I was pretty impressed with the new features. Although I’m not counting on it finally beating Google in the web search front, still the new features were a great addition could very well succeed in attracting more users into the Yahoo Search Engine.

Here are two great articles about the new features of Yahoo Search from the Search Engine Journal. Eric Lander’s Search Optimization Guide for the new Yahoo Search and Loren Baker’s article.