Google is not the only search engine with a special logo. Yahoo, Bing and Ask.com all have logos.

I have some additional logos from others in the industry at the Search Engine Roundtable. Also, if you want to see the St. Patrick’s Day logos from the past 6 years or so, you can see them at 2009, 2008, 2007, 2006, 2005 and 2004 archives.

The study surveyed more than 2,200 online news consumers between December 28, 2009, and January 19, 2010, and found that more than half of online news readers use a major news portal on a typical day, and among younger news consumers (aged 18-29), more than two-thirds visit news portals like Yahoo News or Google News. The news portals beat out all other online news sources among all three age groups.

Also noteworthy is that the Facebook-related news sources scored dramatically higher than Twitter.

The study also cites Nielsen and Hitwise data that shows Yahoo News was the top online news site in 2009.

Some other interesting findings from the Pew study:

• About 71% of internet users, or 53% of all American adults, get their news online; that number has been relatively steady in recent years.
• Only 35% of online news consumers have a favorite site. Most news consumers rely on multiple sources to get their news.
• Of that 35%, only 19% said they’d be willing to pay for news online.

If you’re interested in news, and online news specifically, there’s a lot of thought-provoking material in the report. You can read it online or download the report via PewInternet.org or StateoftheMedia.org.

The TV shortcut shows the title and a short synopsis of the next episode, along with video clips and links to see photos, the show’s schedule, and an episodes list. All of this content comes from Yahoo TV.

Although my LOST example above doesn’t show it, Yahoo will occasionally show links in the left column for related actors, shows, or movies. I’m guessing the query [lost] was a little too generic to prompt that.

There’s also a new celebrity shortcut that focuses on well-known actors and actresses. It’s fairly similar to Yahoo’s recently announced news shortcut in that it offers tabs to see news, photos, video, and Twitter updates about the celebrity.

If the celebrity has a Twitter account, that third tab will change from “Twitter” to “Official Tweets” and will display his/her Twitter stream.

Dan Rampton, Yahoo’s Product Manager said:

The Yahoo! Search engineering teams are rolling out updates to crawling, indexing, and ranking algorithms. Similar to previous updates, you may notice some ranking changes and page shuffling during the process, which we expect to complete over the next few days.

I have not seen much discussion around fluctuations in Yahoo’s search index recently, but maybe some significant changes are coming soon?

However, in the bad-news column for Yahoo, according to PaidContent, T-Mobile has now swapped it for Google as the default search engine on the T-Mobile portal. However it’s no longer clear how valuable these portal deals are, as the market shifts to smartphones. Most of the mobile internet activity takes place on smartphones, though not entirely.

Consumers have more options to access the content and services they are loyal to on smartphones, rather than simply accepting and using the carrier-designated services. Though it’s an “empirical question” anecodotal evidence argues that carrier portals have little or no impact on smartphone users. They may exist in some form but can simply be ignored by consumers.

Google is already the dominant mobile search engine, so this switcheroo of the T-Mobile “default” relationship doesn’t necessarily help Google or harm Yahoo in a major way. There will be some incremental loss or gain (depending on which company we’re talking about) in search query volume and related clicks however.

The US-search engine carrier alliances are now as follows:

• Verizon-Bing (although Android phones feature Google)
• AT&T-Yahoo
• Sprint-Google (and MSFT to a much lesser degree)
• T-Mobile-Google (the company still has a search relationship with Yahoo in Europe)

When Verizon “turned on” the default Bing search deal late last year some Verizon subscribers revolted, which shows that these deals don’t necessarily yield the desired outcome.

Postscript: PaidContent also has details of a Yahoo reoganization that saw the elimination of the mobile group, in favor of a more integrated approach in which mobile is component of everything.

Yahoo’s Arnab Bhattacharjee told conference attendees that the two companies are now going through discussions on how to transition from being competitors to the new situation where Bing will power Yahoo’s algorithmic search results, and that Site Explorer is part of those discussions.

Sasi Parthasarathy of Bing perhaps offered some reassurance when he said that users come first — what is most important to users will determine what products stay.

Parthasarathy said they hope to have an announcement soon.

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Speaking during the “Ask the Search Engines” session at SMX West on Thursday, reps from both search engines said they’re in the process of supporting rel=canonical right now.

Bing’s Sasi Parthasarathy told attendees that canonical tag support should be in place by the end of March or early April. Arnab Bhattacharjee of Yahoo said they’re currently rolling out support of the tag, but cautioned that Yahoo will only use it “as a hint” regarding a web page’s original/primary URL.

Back in October, Google went a step further and announced its support of the canonical tag across different domains. On Thursday, Parthasarathy said Bing has no current plans to follow suit, while Bhattacharjee said Yahoo is exploring the possibility of cross-domain canonical tag support.

There was some quiet chuckling when Davtchev showed screenshots of a competitor’s tool, Google Trends, as a way of determining what queries deserve to get real-time results. But he did so only to contrast a new Yahoo tool called Yahoo TimeSense that, to my knowledge, has never been seen before.

Davtchev described Yahoo TimeSense as the company’s version of Google Trends, but (as you’d expect) says it’s better because

• TimeSense uses language modeling to determine what queries are relevant to “right now”
• TimeSense is better at identifying long-tail queries, whereas Google Trends is good at identifying “head” queries

Davtchev said Yahoo TimeSense is “not public yet,” and sounded as if he was hinting that the tool will be readily available at some point in the future. A Yahoo spokesperson tells us, “The screenshot Ivan shared is from an internal tool that we currently use within Yahoo! We will let you know if/when we make it publicly available. It’s certainly something we’re looking into.”

On a related note, Davtchev also indicated that Yahoo will soon introduce real-time search results beyond their current placement in Yahoo’s news shortcut.

Postscript: You can see the TimeSense slides directly in Ivan’s slides here.

Yahoo has replaced Google as the default search provider throughout the phone. It’s crazy: the home screen widget, the browser, everything’s been programmed to use Yahoo.

Indeed, a Yahoo spokesperson confirms for Search Engine Land that AT&T is using its search services on the Backflip:

We are happy that AT&T has chosen Yahoo! Search as the default mobile search service on the Motorola Backflip, AT&T’s first Android device. We have a long-standing relationship with AT&T and more than 80 carrier partnerships around the world for our award-winning mobile search experience. Mobile is a key corporate priority for Yahoo! and we are focused on making our personally relevant mobile Internet services, like search, available to the broadest audience possible on the widest range of devices.

There are a handful more Android-powered phones coming soon from AT&T, but it’s unknown if they’ll also use Yahoo as the default search provider.