According to a study conducted by PEW Internet and American Life Project, each day, approximately 60 million people use a search engine. In an attempt to attract more and more users, online giants as Google, Yahoo, Microsoft, etc. continuously embellish their search engines with innovative features. Recently, Yahoo revamped its search engine to allure a fresh stream of users as well as to keep its loyal patrons intact.

“Way back in 1994, Yahoo started out as a human-powered search engine. At that point of time, our objective was to provide users a simple way to find whatever they were looking for. Today, we want our search engine to give our patrons an answer to their query in one search. This prompted us to evolve our search engine once again,” reveals Vish Makhijani, General Manager of Yahoo! Search.

What’s new in Yahoo! Search?
The new Yahoo! Search comes with a user-friendly feature called Search Assist, which makes the entire search process interactive. As soon as the user starts to type in the search box, Search Assist begins the interactive session, where it provides query suggestions as well as information about concepts related to the query. Instead of typing the whole query and wasting his precious time, the user can point and click at the most appropriate query suggestion or related concept and get an answer to his question instantly.

For instance, if the user wants to know something about ‘energy savings’, then he would have to enter the query in the search box. The moment he completes typing the first word, Search Assist will start making suggestions. In one column, query suggestions as US energy savings corp., Ontario energy savings, etc. will appear, and in the second column, related concepts as saving energy, energy bills, etc. will appear. The user can either take the help of Search Assist or follow the links in the search-result page.

“If we go by the initial feedbacks, we can proudly state that almost 61 percent of our users found Search Assist quite useful,” exclaims Vish Makhijani.

Some More Interesting Add-ons
At times, the right answer is a photo or video rather than a link. In Yahoo! Search, multimedia content has been directly integrated into the search result. For instance, a user tracking the search words ‘Dove Evolution’ can find and view a couple of videos on the subject. Besides this, for some popular categories like movies, music, travel, health, etc. separate search pages have been created to give more exhaustive search results.

“Internet users usually don’t have too much of time at their disposal. They want to get things done quickly. We have kept this fact in mind while renovating our search engine. The new Yahoo! Search provides requisite information easily, quickly and often in one search,” informs Makhijani. “However, this is just a beginning. More improvements will appear in the next few months. Yahoo! Search is all set to revolutionize the way people search on the search engine. Until then, use Yahoo! Search once, and tell us what you think,” continues Makhijani.