Yahoo! Search
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
| Yahoo! Search | |
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 Yahoo! Search |
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| URL | search.yahoo.com |
| Type of site | Search Engine |
| Available language(s) | Multilingual |
| Owner | Yahoo! |
| Created by | Yahoo! |
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. [1]
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 by Google until 2004, when Yahoo! Search became independent. Yahoo! Search major competitors are: Google Search, Live Search and Ask Search.
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[edit] 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 they search engine results to other companies, to show on their own web sites. They 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.
[edit] 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!.[2] This includes index updates named Weather Updates and their Yahoo! Search Assist feature.
[edit] International presence
Yahoo! Search also provides their search interface in at least 38 international markets and a variety of available languages.[3] Yahoo! has a presence in Europe, Asia and across the Emerging Markets.
[edit] 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 spreadsheets, PowerPoint, Word documents, 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.[4]
For a Basic and starter guide to Yahoo! Search, they also provide a Search Basics tutorial.[5]
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. [6][7]
[edit] SearchScan
On May 11, 2008, Yahoo! introduced SearchScan. If enabled this add-on/feature will enhance Yahoo! Search by automatically alerting users of viruses, spyware and spammy websites.[8]
[edit] Search 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.[9]
[edit] See also
[edit] References
- ^ Yahoo! Search second largest search engine according to Nielse/Netratings reports.
- ^ Yahoo! Search Blog
- ^ Yahoo! international presence
- ^ Advanced Search
- ^ Search Basics tutorial
- ^ Yahoo Search Glue Pages in India - To good to be Beta
- ^ Yahoo Glue Pages Launches In India
- ^ Yahoo! SearchScan information page
- ^ About Yahoo! Search
[edit] External links
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