08 April 2003

Yahoo! on Tour

Yahoo!'s rebuilt search engine offers users Google-like features with Yahoo! customised services covering news, sports, weather and directions. With a cleaner interface, more tightly integrated image search and a number of advanced options, the revamped Yahoo! may become a one stop shop for surfers, encroaching on Google's market domination.

Handy options such as shortcuts to email, news, weather, dictionaries and maps, ease the search experience. By typing mail! into the toolbar, for instance, users are directed to Yahoo! email. Indeed type any Yahoo! related service followed by an exclamation mark into the toolbar and you'll be directed to that function.

Similarly by typing the word 'define' before a word, users are lead directly to a dictionary definition of that word. Other shortcuts include typing 'news' before a topic (e.g. news UN), 'weather' before a city and 'map' before a place name. Naturally these options require some level of user sophistication. Yahoo! seemingly hopes first time users will avail of its 'tour' option to become familiar with the tricks of the trade.

For the more discerning Yahoo! user, preferences can be set to customise the search experience. A preference page offers a chance to view up to 100 results a page, restrict adult content and limit global search results to select languages.

Perhaps intentionally the dotcom version is very US-centred and international users may be encouraged to abandon the dotcom in favour of Yahoo! regional sites.

The revamped search engine was launched on April 7, but will roll out new features gradually over the course of the next few months.

Home | Careers | RSS | Contact Us | Newsletter

International sites: