Yahoo has launched Yahoo search suggestions. This feature is not entirely new as it has been available in the Firefox Yahoo! Toolbar for a while. Like the Google version it comes up with changing suggestions for search terms as you type. Unlike the Google version, it is only available on its .com interface and it does not give you an estimate of the number of results for each strategy. (See below for screen shots of the two services ). Neither is ’suggest’ available on the vanilla search screens such as search.yahoo.com.

It annoys me no end when search engines roll out and advertise features that are only available on their .com sites, especially when many of these engines automatically redirect you to your local country version. I hope that Yahoo enables this feature world-wide and soon. Meanwhile, I shall continue with my local UK version.

Figure 1: Yahoo! Suggests for gordon brown

Figure 2: Google Suggests for gordon brown

Thomas Hawk has reported on his blog that Yahoo has integrated Flickr photos into its image search. It is an obvious move but has been a long time coming - Yahoo bought Flickr in March 2005.

A quick check by searching on UKeiG, though, revealed that Yahoo.com image search includes Flickr but the UK and Ireland version does not.

Amit Agarwal has reported on a new version of Yahoo! called Yahoo! Alpha at http://au.alpha.yahoo.com. It has a minimalist home page, which has become de rigueur for search engines these days, and a single search box. The results page displays the usual list of web pages and on the right hand side you can opt to view results from Flickr, Yahoo Answers, YouTube, Yahoo News, Wikipedia and Sponsored links.

In the top right hand corner there is an option to Customise this page that enables you to remove one or more of the resources and to add your own.

I was initially intrigued by this but found it rather slow to respond and not as slick or responsive as Askx.com, which is testing out a similar approach to searching. Missing from both Askx and Yahoo Alpha is an obvious Advanced Search link. Both are in Beta and worth watching to see how they develop.

Those of you who use the link commands in Live.com will have noticed that over the past week link: and linkdomain: have been returning blank results pages. This is not a temporary glitch but has been done on purpose by Live. According to their blog:

” We have been seeing broad use of these features by legitimate users but unfortunately also what appears to be mass automated usage for data mining. So for now, we have made the tough call to block all queries with these operators. We are doing our best to get this back online as soon as possible in a manner that allows folks that use this functionality for real queries.”

The linkfromdomain: command, which lists all the pages that a web site links to, is still working.

While Live makes up its mind about what to do with the commands try link and linkdomain in Yahoo. The results are not always as comprehensive as Live.com’s but will probably suffice in most situations. The syntax for the Yahoo’s link command is slightly different. To find pages that link to a specific page on a site it is:

link:http://www.yoursite.com/pagename.html

Note that you must include the ‘http://’

To find pages that link to any page on a site the syntax is similar to Live’s:

linkdomain:yoursite.com

Google also has a link command but it displays a small fraction of the results.

Yahoo have integrated the Babel Fish translation tool into their service. Originally part of AltaVista, which Yahoo owns, Babel Fish looks very much the same in its new home. Additions include:

• Two more language pair choices: Simplified Chinese into Traditional Chinese, and Traditional Chinese into Simplified Chinese;
• Yahoo search results now include a translation link next to foreign language pages when a Babel Fish language pair is available
• You can add the Babel Fish button to your Yahoo Toolbar for one-click translation of web pages

It has more language pairs than Google, but Google’s offering has Arabic to English translation.

If you have never tried any of these tools before, do not expect too much from them. Remember it is a computer program not a human being preparing the translation. The results are often more humorous than accurate, and sometimes the tools give up completely, but there is usually enough to give you a rough idea of some of the content of the page.

What is a Babel fish? It is a fictional species of fish that appears in Douglas Adams’ Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. You stick it in your ear and you can immediately understand anything that is said to you in any language.

Yahoo! Desktop Search Beta

Yahoo has updated its Desktop Search and now supports Thunderbird email. Although previous versions of YDS did index and search Thunderbird files you had to search them under the “All files” category. Now you can chose just “Email”. The number of file types supported in the main program has been considerably reduced, though. If you want the full range of 300+ file types you have to install the expansion pack.

For me, Yahoo Desktop is still by far the best with Copernic’s offering coming second.

Yahoo to the Max is a new book from Ran Hock that tells you all there is to know about Yahoo together with recommended strategies for getting the best out of the service. I sometimes suspect that Ran knows more about Yahoo than Yahoo themselves!

Yagoohoogle, mentioned in a posting on April 7th, has becomeTwingine. Same features (compares Google and Yahoo side by side) but the title and URL are much easier to remember!

Yahoo! Mindset: “View Yahoo! Search results sorted according to whether they are more commercial or more informational (i.e., from academic, non-commercial, or research-oriented sources).”

I really like this one! Type in your search and Yahoo! Mindset gives you the first 10 results with a slider bar at the top of the page. At one end of the bar is “shopping” and at the other “researching”. You start off in the middle and can slide the bar in either direction to change the emphasis.

A test search on ‘gin vodka sales UK’ actually came up with a good result at number 1 with the slider in the middle - the Gin and Vodka Association (yes, there really is one and the site has some good statistics!). Moving the slider towards ‘researching’ started to move the Gin & Vodka Association down the list but brought in equally interesting data I might otherwise have missed. As expected, moving the slider towards ’shopping’ brought up sites selling gin and/or vodka, books on Amazon telling me how to make gin and vodka cocktails and a site with the wonderful name of Dinky Drinks!

More research orientated strategies such as ‘climate change’ and ‘hubbert peak oil’ were not as varied and the shopping side was more about books on the subject. What they did highlight, though, was that shifting the bar in either direction significantly altered the results that appeared in the top 10 and presented pages that one might not have normally seen.

Highly recommended.

YaGoohoo!gle

An interesting tool that runs your search on both Google and Yahoo at the same time. It displays your results in two fames alongside one another in your browser so you can view both sets at the same time. Actually - its better to look at them one at a time; I started to feel seasick trying to compare the results in both sets. If you just want to compare coverage and results between Yahoo and Google for a particular search strategy then use Thumbshots Ranking.