At its core, it is almost identical to Google’s solution. The search results are automatically updated whenever you enter or remove characters from the search form.

But similarities end there. Yahoo displays an overlay search box on the search page that is automatically updated, while the search results page is updated on Google.

A box opens around the search form that indicates the direct search interface. It is made up of the search form and button, a list of suggested search terms and a selection of the top results for the selected term.

If you enter win in the search form you see suggestions for Windows Media Player, Windows Live Messenger, Winrar, Oprah Winfrey, Winzip and Windows Update at the top.

It is possible to switch between those suggested results with the keyboard up and down keys or the mouse. The search results change whenever a new suggested term is selected, or if characters are added or removed from the search term.

The results listing displays different results, from the top 3 sites for that search term over shopping information pulled from Yahoo Shopping, interesting locations or places for countries or cities to media information with direct trailer links.

A search for London demonstrates one of the weaknesses of the algorithm. One would expect to find London city information, but the direct result is for the movie London.

A click on the search button loads the standard search results. Surprisingly enough, the first search results is either Yahoo’s own London visitor guide or the Visit London website. It feels rather strange that the movie is displayed instead in the direct search interface.

The new search interface has only been enabled on search.yahoo.com and not the main Yahoo domain or a country subdomain. A search on the main Yahoo website on the other hand loads the website where Yahoo Search Direct can be tested.

The way the results are presented will surely drive Yahoo revenues up, considering that many searches only reveal hits from Yahoo Shopping or other Yahoo properties.

It is however just the next logical step for search engines, from indexing and sorting the web, to keeping users on their properties to increase their revenue even more. Google does that as well with integration of their services in the search engine results.

I personally cannot see myself using Yahoo Search Direct. The limit of three results, and sometimes even less, is just not enough most of the time to find what I’m looking for.

What’s your impression of the new feature?

Disable Yahoo! Search Direct

It is possible to turn off Yahoo! Search Direct. Click on More > Preferences on the main search website

Locate Search Direct – Change the Search Direct Layer Frequency on the new page and click the Edit button right beneath the setting. Click on Off and then the Save button to save the new preference.

These settings are saved temporarily if you are not logged into a Yahoo account, and permanently if you are logged in. Temporarily means that Yahoo saves a cookie on your computer that contains the control. If the cookie is deleted, the information that Yahoo Search Direct has been disabled are lost and the function becomes active again.

Try This Search On optimizes the process by embedding links to other search engines right into popular search engines such as Google, Bing or Yahoo Search.

The links available are listed at the bottom of the search result page. This behavior can be changed to display them at the top instead. A click loads the results in the same tab, a middle-click in a new tab.

The userscript offers customization options to add or remove links from the default set. The list of search engines depends on the type of search. A general search displays different search engine choices than a shopping or video search.

Search engines are identified by ID. A full list is available on the userscript profile page and the preferences help page.

Search engines are removed by deleting their ID from the preferences. Users need to make sure to include the underscore before and after the ID when deleting or adding search engines from the preferences. Failure to do so can corrupt the full listing so that it becomes useless until the error is corrected.

Try this search on is a handy userscript for Firefox users who sometimes want or need to search on different search engines for a search term.

Locate Multiple Domains in Search Results is a free userscript that can visualize results from those domains in the Google, Yahoo and Bing search engines.

The script unfortunately requires manual editing of its code to add domains to it but more about that later.

The userscript basically allows the configuration of an unlimited number of sites that should be highlighted in the three popular search engines. Each site can get its own color code for additional means of visualizing them. It is of course also possible to use one color for all sites, or use colors for specific site groups.

The userscript needs to be edited before it becomes useful. This is done differently depending on the browser and its version. One option is to save the userscript to the local computer, instead of installing it right away, to edit it there which is more comfortable than editing it in the browser window.

Users who want to do that find the source code on this page. Simply copy and paste it into a plain text file on your computer first as it is easier that way for editing purpose.

Locate the following code near the top of the source code

var sites = [
['devseo.co.uk', '#C2D9EF'],
['syst3m32.co.uk', '#98292B'],
['myspace.com', '#CCC']
];

each site is added in the format ['domain name', 'color'],

To add new domain names edit the existing ones or add new ones. Make sure you keep the format exactly as it is, as it would break the script otherwise. To add ghacks as the first site you would change the code this way

var sites = [
['ghacks.net', '#C2D9EF'],
['syst3m32.co.uk', '#98292B'],
['myspace.com', '#CCC']
];

You can check out a HTML color code chart here if you need to. Simply add all your favorite sites this way and save the file in the end as userscript.js.

Then drag and drop it into the browser window where it should be automatically picked up. Firefox users need the Greasemonkey extension for this though. (via Make use of)

During that period part of Yahoo’s Live search results will be powered by Bing, “with paid search volume in particular kept low enough to help minimize any potential impact” to Yahoo advertiser accounts.

Yahoo aims for a transition in the August / September timeframe for Bing powered organic search results if the “testing continues to yield high quality results”.

What does that mean for the search engine market? It means that Microsoft’s Bing will increase its search volume closing the gap to Google, which is dominating search.

The total market share depends on how the data is accumulated. Google is usually listed with a market share between 65% and 85%, Bing with 3% to 10% and Yahoo between 6% and 15%. In best case, Bing will increase its search engine reach to 25% of the total market share, Barry Schwartz at the Search Engine Land website even sees Bing powering 30% of paid and organic search queries globally after the transition finishes.

What does it mean for search engine visitors? The search results will ultimately be the same on Bing and Yahoo Search. The only differences are the additional features that are offered on the two search engine websites.

It is likely that Yahoo users will continue to use Yahoo for their searches, considering that they are likely using other Yahoo features such as Yahoo Mail as well, some might switch to Bing if they do not use any Yahoo services, others might switch to Google because of search result differences.

Microsoft Bing, with the additional data provided by Yahoo Search, may be able to improve the quality of the search results which could improve the search engine’s market share in the long run.

Thumbnails allow search engine users to spot parked domains (usually in the form of domains that once had content which is still indexed in the search engines) but also websites that look like potentially risky to visit. It is obviously not always possible to evaluate a website from merely looking at its screenshot but it can aid the searcher in that process. This, combined with the information displayed as text, can help the user make a better decision on which websites to visit.

Google Preview is a Firefox add-on that will add those preview images not only to Google Search but also to Yahoo Search. It can furthermore add a popularity bar to each website that is displaying the website’s Alexa rank. The add-on can place a quick on and off button in the Firefox status bar to manage the add-on without having to open the options in the add-on’s menu.

Google Preview will insert sponsored links into some search results. This behavior can be deactivated in the program’s options. The add-on is available at the official Mozilla Firefox website.

Yahoo Mail now comes with a redesigned mobile version that is available at http://m.yahoo.com/ that now offers one click access to important functions, attachment downloads like pdf or Microsoft Word documents and access to personal folders. The attachment size was raised from 10 Megabytes to 25 which is the exact same size that Gmail is offering it’s users. The inbox of Yahoo Mail is expanded with an application box that is bringing third party apps like Picnik, ZumoDirve or PayPal to the inbox with more (Evite was mentioned) to come in future updates.

Yahoo Mail Contacts are improved as well as they can now be automatically updated whenever a contact changes their name, e-mail address or phone number.

Yahoo Messenger 10 Beta is now available for download. It introduces HD video calling and social improvements that keep users informed about their contacts including status updates. Other additions include Flickr uploads, Yahoo! Buzz stories, Tweets and more that are all available from the messenger’s interface.

Yahoo Search was upgraded as well. It does however seem that only search engine users from the United States will be able to access the new functionality that allows them to explore related concepts, filter results by popular websites only or narrow down search results by type.

Yahoo is adding more social elements to their products. They also started to add features that were introduced by Google and Microsoft services like the email attachment size of 25 Megabytes.

via Ycorpblog

Under the new deal however, both companies will remain separate and each will carry on their normal lives without the corporate wedding thing. But for the next ten years, both Yahoo and Microsoft will team up efforts to take on Google and their huge market dominance. Both companies combined will control 30% of the search engine market.

Yahoo, who has been bleeding fiscally for the past few years, will gain control of the ad revenue of both companies, which they claim will boost annual revenue of the company by half a billion dollars. It will also cut capital expenditure by a whopping $200 million while increasing operating cash flow by $275 million. Yahoo will be allowed to keep 88% of their ad sales during the first 5 years and Microsoft will guarantee a certain level of search revenue for Yahoo.

On the other side of the spectrum, Microsoft will control the actual technology used to serve the web results. Microsoft will roll out its “new” Bing search platform onto both companies search engines while incorporating some of Yahoo’s existing technologies such as Panama-ad-selling tool.

All in all the deal is expected to go into full effect within the next 2 years, once it passes regulatory checks that is. As it stands, it seems like the FCC won’t be bothered by such a partnership as both companies do seem to be taking quite a beating from the big “G.” And more importantly, both companies will remain separate during the entire love affair.

Of course its too early to tell if this will work out for both companies in the long run, but as it stands, Microsoft and Yahoo are bleeding in the SE department and something like this looks more promising then ever before. I’m not expecting Yahoo and Microsoft to snap up an extra 20% of the search engine market within the next few years, but with Google’s hands in everything other then improving their search results I think it is possible for a small dent to be made in Google’s dominance.

In the end, it will be Microsoft and Yahoo who will have to prove to customers that their search engines are on par with Google. At least for now no one can complain about Bing’s image and video search, hopefully they bring up their website results to par.

So what are your thoughts? Should Google be frightened or is Microsoft and Yahoo just another failed attempt to unseat the undisputed king? Let me know in the comments below.

The blog lists the major changes of the core update mentioning in the end that about 1.1 million data values have been affected by the search engine update. Most of the changes listed in the blog post add new searches or information to the search engine. This includes for example the updates to some European countries like Slovakia, regions (like Wales), country borders (India, China..) but also more interesting comparisons (USA deficit vs. UK), combined time series plots of different quantities (population Germany gdp) and additional ways of searching for information and data entries.

There is obviously still a fundamental different between the information that are provided by Wolfram Alpha and classic search engines like Google Search, Bing or Yahoo Search. The developers are however on a good way to fill a gap that most users were probably not aware of until they discovered that they could use Wolfram Alpha in a certain way to compute information that would take lots of manual work otherwise.

Still, the search engine is limited and it sometimes depends on the phrase if it understands the search query.

Every user who is running the Faroo client contributes to the web search engine in two ways. So called words, some would say keywords, are stored on the user’s computer which are linked to websites. If another user of the system searches for those words they will be retrieved from the first user – or another user who is also hosting those words – and send to the user searching for them.

This means that every user has to contribute disk space to the Faroo project so that the words and information can be hosted. The disk space that is provided can be set in the options from 1 Gigabyte to unlimited storage space.

The second contribution of every user is the web surfing. If he visits a new website it will be added to the crawler to keep the index up to date.

Faroo is receiving additional information compared to convention search engines such as Google. Among that data is information like the time a user spend on a website and the users behavior on that site which are factors for the ranking calculations.

Faroo does not keep search logs and protects the privacy of its users. Search queries are encrypted which provides an interesting option for users in countries that like to censor search results.

Every search engine is only as good as its results. Can Faroo deliver the same search quality that Google or Yahoo are offering? Searching for names like ghacks, cnn or microsoft did return the correct results on the first pages.

The quality of two or three word queries on the other hand was not optimal yet and more often than not lead to mediocre results. This can be mainly attributed to the number of users who are currently actively using the search engine.

At the time of writing only 106 users were connected to the system which is obviously to low to crawl the entire World Wide Web and provide results for any search term one might enter in the search form.

If Faroo manages to attract enough users that fuel the engine it could become a contender in the search engine market.

This can be quite frustrating especially if you use Yahoo regularly to search the Internet. A small Greasemonkey script comes to the rescue, at least to the rescue of Firefox users. The Yahoo! Redirect Remover script removes the redirects from the search results including Yahoo video search and virtually every other Yahoo.com page that is using those kind of redirects.

The script obviously requires Greasemonkey to be installed before the Yahoo! Redirect Remover script itself can be installed and used.

Yahoo Images are actually redirected twice it seems. Another Greasemonkey script takes care of the second redirect. Install the Yahoo Image Relinker script for Greasemonkey if you want to see the direct links to the images instead of the second Yahoo redirect.