« Previous post
Next post »

September 15, 2005

Yahoo Releases Instant Search

Michael Arrington

8 comments »

Yahoo announced Instant Search last night (more info on this landing page).

Like Google Suggest and Snap, Yahoo has added ajax functionality to search.

It’s different, though. Google Suggest and Snap use ajax to suggest search queries based on what you’ve typed in so far, whereas Yahoo has integrated basic search results into the interface. This means you can get answers to simple and popular searches (like weather) without a page refresh.

Try it out. Yahoo suggests queries such as “Boston Weather” and “Wikipedia”. This type of search gives good results.

And Yahoo takes a small swipe at Google by saying ““Why feel lucky when you can be right”, a reference to Google’s Feeling Lucky button. John Battelle says “Meeeeyowww, the claws are out….” :-)

Additional Reading

Charlene Li, Google Blogoscoped, Brad Hill, Ken Leebow, Search Engine Roundtable

  • Sphere It

This entry was posted on Thursday, September 15th, 2005 at 9:32 am and is filed under Company & Product Profiles. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

Trackbacks/Pings (Trackback URL)

Comments

RSS feed for comments on this post.

  1. Bob Aman

    September 15th, 2005 at 11:41 am

    Oh, that’s actually hot. I definately like this a lot better than Google Suggest. Never thought I’d actually like a Yahoo service (Flickr doesn’t count). Still sticking with Google’s personalized page as my homepage though. Although… I do have that copy of GoogleX (boohoo @ it’s official demise) sticking around that I’ve been wanting to start running on localhost… I should get around to doing that.

  2. Jack DeNeut

    September 15th, 2005 at 3:56 pm

    It’s a cool little hack, but I’m not sure how useful this kind of interface will be. On my (slow) laptop, it takes as long or longer to get “instant” results than it does to do a normal search.

    Also, having only one result can make for some “interesting” suggestions. A search for “DE” (the ISO code for Germany) brings up Google(!) Germany as the “best” result (screenshot on my blog).

  3. Marek Futrega

    September 15th, 2005 at 6:34 pm

    This looks like yet another toy by Yahoo only to generate buzz because no one is likely to actually use it.

    I mean, what is the purpose of showing an irrelevant result 9/10 times after every letter your type on your way to what you’re actually looking for? What motivation for regular folks is there to use this kind of service instead of standard search? I don’t see any just like with Google Suggest.

  4. ibvughin

    February 12th, 2007 at 11:27 am

    This web-site is the coolest! Now I don’t have to feel so intimated by science! You’re a genius! I think I’ll visit this site oftenc

  5. yeluymty

    February 12th, 2007 at 11:57 am

    Very interesting design.. I’ll come back to see updates.r

  6. mickey4741

    February 26th, 2007 at 4:51 pm

    Anyone know how I could put instant search on my site?

  7. ty

    February 27th, 2007 at 6:10 am

    faaakinewll i jus wanted 2 get 0n de syt kidah but u wnt even lemme on get me gang u deserve shuttin dwn im guun try yh n if it wnt letme im gna kiwl yo cat mayne … ya herd meh :D:D:@:@:s:s::(:( …..mixed emotinons blad

  8. titcew

    March 7th, 2007 at 5:33 pm

    How did u do this! It’s perfect! the best site i’ve ever seen.A

« Previous post
Next post »