Yahoo! Search

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Yahoo! Search
File:Yahoo!Search.png
File:Yahoo! Search.JPG
Yahoo! Search
URL search.yahoo.com
Commercial? Yes
Type of site Search Engine
Registration Optional
Available language(s) Multilingual (40)
Owner Yahoo!
Created by Yahoo!
Launched March 1, 1995
Alexa rank 3[1]
Current status Active

Yahoo! Search is a web search engine, owned by Yahoo! Inc. and was as of December 2009, the 2nd largest search engine on the web by query volume, at 6.29%, after its competitor Google at 85.35% and before Bing at 3.27%, according to Net Applications.[2]

Originally, Yahoo! Search started as a web directory of other websites, organized in a hierarchy, as opposed to a searchable index of pages. In the late 1990s, Yahoo! evolved into a full-fledged portal with a search interface and, by 2007, a limited version of selection-based search.

Yahoo! Search, originally referred to as Yahoo! provided Search interface, would send queries to a searchable index of pages supplemented with its directory of sites. The results were presented to the user under the Yahoo! brand. Originally, none of the actual web crawling and storage/retrieval of data was done by Yahoo! itself. In 2001 the searchable index was powered by Inktomi and later was powered by Google until 2004, when Yahoo! Search became independent. Yahoo! Search major competitors are: Google Search, Bing and Ask Search.

On July 29, 2009, Microsoft and Yahoo! announced a deal in which Bing would power Yahoo! Search.[3].

Search technology acquisition

Seeking to provide its own search engine results, Yahoo! acquired their own search technology.

In 2002, they bought Inktomi, a "behind the scenes" or OEM search engine provider, whose results are shown on other companies' websites and powered Yahoo! in its earlier days. In 2003, they purchased Overture Services, Inc., which owned the AlltheWeb and AltaVista search engines. Initially, even though Yahoo! owned multiple search engines, they didn't use them on the main yahoo.com website, but kept using Google's search engine for its results.

Starting in 2003, Yahoo! Search became its own web crawler-based search engine, with a reinvented crawler called Yahoo! Slurp. Yahoo! Search combined the capabilities of all the search engine companies they had acquired, with its existing research, and put them into a single search engine. The new search engine results were included in all of Yahoo!'s sites that had a web search function. Yahoo! also started to sell the search engine results to other companies, to show on their own web sites. Their relationship with Google was terminated at that time, with the former partners becoming each other's main competitors.

In October 2007, Yahoo! Search was updated with a more modern appearance in line with the redesigned Yahoo! home page. In addition, Search Assist was added; which provides real-time query suggestions and related concepts as they are typed.

In July 2008, Yahoo! Search announced the introduction of a new service called "Build Your Own Search Service," or BOSS. This service opens the doors for developers to use Yahoo!'s system for indexing information and images and create their own custom search engine.[4]

In July 2009, Yahoo! signed a deal with Microsoft, the result of which was that Yahoo! Search would be powered by Bing.

Yahoo! Search blog & announcements

The team at Yahoo! Search frequently blogged about search announcements, features, updates and enhancements. The Yahoo! Search Blog, as stated provided A look inside the world of search from the people at Yahoo!.[5] This included index updates named Weather Updates and their Yahoo! Search Assist feature.

International presence

Yahoo! Search also provided their search interface in at least 38 international markets and a variety of available languages.[6] Yahoo! has a presence in Europe, Asia and across the Emerging Markets.

Languages

Search results

Yahoo! Search indexed and cached the common HTML page formats, as well as several of the more popular file-types, such as PDF, Excel spreadsheets, PowerPoint, Word documents, RSS/XML and plain text files. For some of these supported file-types, Yahoo! Search provided cached links on their search results allowing for viewing of these file-types in standard HTML.

Using the Advanced Search interface or Preferences settings, Yahoo! Search allowed the customization of search results and enabling of certain settings such as: SafeSearch, Language Selection, Number of results, Domain restrictions, etc.[7]

For a Basic and starter guide to Yahoo! Search, they also provided a Search Basics tutorial.[8]

In the first week of May 2008, Yahoo! launched a new search mash up called Yahoo! Glue, which is in beta testing.

Selection-based search

On June 20, 2007, Yahoo! introduced a selection-based search feature called Yahoo! Shortcuts. When activated this selection-based search feature enabled users to invoke search using only their mouse and receive search suggestions in floating windows while remaining on Yahoo! properties such as Yahoo! Mail. This feature was only active on Yahoo web pages or pages within the Yahoo! Publisher Network. Yahoo! Shortcuts required the content-owner to modify the underlying HTML of his or her webpage to call out the specific keywords to be enhanced. The technology for context-aware selection-based search on Yahoo pages was first developed by Reiner Kraft.[9]

SearchScan

File:SearchScan.png
SearchScan in action.

On May 11, 2008, Yahoo! introduced SearchScan. If enabled this add-on/feature enhanced Yahoo! Search by automatically alerting users of viruses, spyware and spam websites.[10]

Search verticals

Yahoo! Search provided the ability to search across numerous vertical properties outside just the Web at large. These included Images, Videos, Local, Shopping, Yahoo! Answers, Audio, Directory, Jobs, News, Mobile, Travel and various other services as listed on their About Yahoo! Search page.[11]

See also

References

External links

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