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Yahoo overhauls its search engine
By xaby | October 3, 2007
October 02, 2007 (Computerworld) — Yahoo Inc. has made significant enhancements to its search engine, and the company said the changes will boost the speed of searches and improve the accuracy of results.
The engine’s new Search Assist feature includes additional suggested search topics on the main results page, along with a list of related concepts to help users explore an unfamiliar subject area, said Tim Mayer, a member of Yahoo’s search development team, in a blog post.
For example, Mayer said, a search for “United Nations” would prompt Search Assist to list related topics like “general assembly,” “1945,” “League of Nations” and “secretary general” on the results page. If a user clicks on “general assembly,” a new set of results and concepts related to United Nations General Assembly would be displayed, he said.
Search Assist drops down automatically from the search box page when it “senses” a user is having trouble putting together a query, according to Mayer. But it only shows up when a user needs or asks for it, he noted.
“We did this to avoid a common complaint about assistance technologies on other search engines” — that suggestions are added to the results page whether or not a user wants or needs them, he wrote.
Yahoo has been testing the new Search Assist feature for several months, and there have been significant improvements over that time in user satisfaction, according to Mayer. For example, there was a 61% increase in successful task completion when users had Search Assist as part of their search, he said.
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