Yahoo’s Search Assistant and Universal Search

Yahoo is putting some extra heat on Google in the competition for best search engine.

 They released a search assistant feature, which automatically expands related queries and info sometimes while you’re typing (or pausing your typing). For instance, when you enter blogging, the suggestions include “typepad blogging tools” or “make money blogging. “Some of the suggestions are also related to semi-recent news, which makes it more useful. I’m not sure if this box becomes annoying over time (as I’m no regular Yahoo user), but it runs very smoothly here.

Also, Yahoo now have their own flavor of “universal search"; for instance, video players directly embedded on web results (and not just as shortcut), e.g. for the query youtube founders, as well as even more Flickr imagery, like for the query cityscape.

[Hat tip to Niraj Sanghvi and Google Operating System.]

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