This is an evolution of Yahoo’s “search shortcuts” idea – will be available (you have to install it) from next.yahoo.com in a manner of minutes (I am told). From the release:
Today Yahoo! launches Instant Search, an early beta feature that makes the search process faster by providing a way for users to get instant answers. As users type, Instant Search immediately displays the most relevant result for the most popular queries directly beneath the search box. In many cases instant facts and answers are provided in the form of Yahoo! Search Shortcut results and, when a shortcut is not available for a query, Instant Search supplies the top Yahoo! Search web result for the most common searches. Users can immediately access answers by clicking a ‘CTRL Enter’ hotkey once results are displayed.
My favorite line in the release (full text below):
Why feel lucky when you can be right?
Meeeeyowww, the claws are out….
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Yahoo! Instant Search beta Now Available
Today Yahoo! launches Instant Search, an early beta feature that makes the search process faster by providing a way for users to get instant answers. As users type, Instant Search immediately displays the most relevant result for the most popular queries directly beneath the search box. In many cases instant facts and answers are provided in the form of Yahoo! Search Shortcut results and, when a shortcut is not available for a query, Instant Search supplies the top Yahoo! Search web result for the most common searches. Users can immediately access answers by clicking a ‘CTRL Enter’ hotkey once results are displayed.
If a search for a popular web address is conducted, users immediately receive a link that matches what was typed and when a shortcut, search result, or URL is not available for a particular query, the Search the Web button is always at hand. With Instant Search, select misspellings are automatically detected and corrections are displayed right below the search box.
Users can add Instant Search to their http://search.yahoo.com page, a simple search interface that can be customized with multiple features and products like My Web, Yahoo! Mail and Yahoo! News, to speed up common searches and further establish Yahoo! Search as the starting point to the Internet.
Why feel lucky when you can be right? Instant Search, available on http://next.yahoo.com, adds a bit of fun to web search, try the following examples or try your own searches:
• Boston Weather
• San Francisco Coffee Shops
• NFL
• 22 5th Ave New York New York
• Britny Spears (misspelled on purpose)
Instant Search will improve and expand over time, but we wanted to show this cool, innovative feature while it is new. Screen shots are included on the second page. Please let me know if you are interested in learning more or if you are interested in speaking to someone from Yahoo!.
yeah, what he said.
I tested it. It’s mildly useful
They’re hampered by a lack of indexing technology, frankly. They return one result at most, and don’t even do prefix matches, let alone substrings. If the string doesn’t match exactly, it returns nothing, so the user waits, thinking that the XMLHttpRequest isn’t done yet.
Bah, I was worried for a minute.
Funny, I got this autoreply from their feedback form. I guess they’re working on blog search.
I know this isn’t the place but so far Google’s blog search has been terrible!
Try searching “Philosophy” in Google’s blog search.
Then try searching Philosophy and Blog in the regular search.
By far the second search turns up more sites with active interesting conversations about philosophy. For godsakes MSN’s results for Philosophy and Blog far exceed Google’s Blog search results for philosophy.
I just don’t get it. Maybe Yahoo! will do it right.