- Yahoo! Search
Infobox Website
name = Yahoo! Search
caption = Yahoo! Search
owner =Yahoo!
author =Yahoo!
type = Search Engine
language =Multilingual
url = [http://search.yahoo.com search.yahoo.com]Yahoo! Search is a web search engine, owned by Yahoo!, Inc. and is currently the second largest search engine on the web, after its competitor Google. [ [http://www.nielsen-netratings.com/pr/pr_070919.pdf Yahoo! Search second largest search engine according to Nielse/Netratings reports.] ]
Originally "Yahoo! Search" started as a web directory of other websites, organized in a hierarchy, as opposed to a searchable index of pages. In late 1990s,
Yahoo! evolved into a full-fledged portal, with eventually a search interface.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 byGoogle until 2004, when Yahoo! Search became independent. Yahoo! Search major competitors are: Google Search,Live Search and Ask Search.Search technology acquisition
Seeking to provide its own search engine results, Yahoo! acquired their own search technology.
In
2002 , they boughtInktomi , 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 theAlltheWeb andAltaVista 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 ownweb crawler -based search engine, with a reinvented crawler calledYahoo! 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. [cite web|accessdate=2008-07-25|url=http://yhoo.client.shareholder.com/press/releasedetail.cfm?ReleaseID=320623|publisher=Yahoo!|title=Yahoo! Opens Up Search Technology Infrastructure for Innovative, New Search Experiences, Providing Third Parties with Unprecedented Access, Re-Ranking and Presentation Control of Web Search Results|date=July 10 2008 ]Yahoo! Search blog & announcements
The team at Yahoo! Search frequently blogs about search announcements, features, updates and enhancements. The Yahoo! Search Blog, as stated provides "A look inside the world of search from the people at Yahoo!." [ [http://www.ysearchblog.com/ Yahoo! Search Blog] ] This includes index updates named "Weather Updates" and their "Yahoo! Search Assist" feature.
International presence
Yahoo! Search also provides their search interface in at least 38 international markets and a variety of available languages. [ [http://world.yahoo.com/ Yahoo! international presence] ] Yahoo! has a presence in Europe, Asia and across the Emerging Markets.
Search results
Yahoo! Search indexes and caches the common HTML page formats, as well as several of the more popular file-types, such as PDF,
Excel spreadsheet s,PowerPoint ,Word document s, RSS/XML and plain text files. For some of these supported file-types, Yahoo! Search provides "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 allows the customization of search results and enabling of certain settings such as: SafeSearch, Language Selection, Number of results, Domain restrictions, etc. [ [http://search.yahoo.com/web/advanced?ei=UTF-8 Advanced Search] ]
For a Basic and starter guide to Yahoo! Search, they also provide a "Search Basics" tutorial. [ [http://help.yahoo.com/l/us/yahoo/search/basics/ Search Basics tutorial] ]
In the first week of May 2008, Yahoo! launched a new search mash up called "Yahoo! Glue", which is in beta testing. Currently it is only available on the Yahoo! India Search Page. [ [http://myblogposts.com/yahoo-search-glue-pages-in-india-to-good-to-be-beta/1488/ Yahoo Search Glue Pages in India - To good to be Beta] ] [ [http://searchengineland.com/080508-023038.php Yahoo Glue Pages Launches In India] ]
SearchScan
On
May 11 ,2008 , Yahoo! introduced SearchScan. If enabled thisadd-on /feature will enhance Yahoo! Search by automatically alerting users of viruses,spyware and spammy websites. [ [http://tools.search.yahoo.com/newsearch/searchscan Yahoo! SearchScan information page] ]earch verticals
Yahoo! Search provides the ability to search across numerous vertical properties outside just the Web at large. These include Images, Videos, Local, Shopping, Yahoo! Answers, Audio, Directory, Jobs, News, Mobile, Travel and various other services as listed on their "About Yahoo! Search" page. [ [http://tools.search.yahoo.com/about/forsearchers.html About Yahoo! Search] ]
See also
*
Yahoo! Directory
*Yahoo! Next
*List of search engines References
External links
* [http://search.yahoo.com Yahoo! Search]
* [http://www.langreiter.com/exec/yahoo-vs-google.html?q=wikipedia Yahoo! vs. Google search results comparison]
* [http://www.sankey.ws/searchbots.html Search Engines: costs vs. benefits]
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