I wrote earlier that it was probably driving Google crazy to see people “amazed” that Bing is doing stuff that Google itself has long offered. Now Google’s fighting back. The first shot? A new Explore Google Search page.

Google’s had help pages like this before. For example, this one still remains, showing various special features such as the ability to get weather results. But this new page is being featured right from the Google home page:

The page frames many of Google’s features in an easier-to-read format:

And it comes with an introduction highlighting how serious Google is about search:

Search is at the heart of everything we do at Google. Our engineers work every day to solve the hardest search problems, and thus improve your online experience. Here’s a glimpse at what they do, the features they’ve built and the remarkable user stories that inspire our work.

As I said before:

Google’s never really had to market itself to consumers, to trot its stuff. The recently held “Searchology” event didn’t cover anywhere near the range of what Google offers. But if the praise for Bing keeps largely rolling in — if people keep discovering features that aren’t necessarily unique to Bing — Google may find it has to step up.

To me, this page is all about doing that stepping up. Of course, the page is well worth reviewing, for those who aren’t aware how Google can provide everything from sports scores to flight tracking. As can Bing, and as can Yahoo.

Not do be outdone by Live Search adding sports scores, both Yahoo and Google added some of their own. Keep in mind, both Google and Yahoo have had sports scores in the search results, but both have made additions to theirs.

Yahoo has added a way to search for your favorite sports team. For example, a search on Chicago Bulls returns this Yahoo Shortcut:

Google has added Tennis stats and scores, according to Google Operating System. For example, a search on Federer returns this one box:

Microsoft’s new browser IE 8 is now in general release. There are loads of features, which I won’t go into at length. Danny did a preliminary overview of the search and ad-related features of IE8 already, which I’m sure he’ll revisit at some point. And the Wall Street Journal’s Walt Mossberg offers a generally favorable review, but has some complaints about speed.

The two things I’m going to discuss in this post are Microsoft’s “Live Search Accelerators” and Yahoo’s new “visual search shortcuts.”

Live Search Accelerators perform a range of functions, searches or lookups on, for example, a piece of text, a product name or address within a web page. You can also translate text into another language or send it to Facebook or Digg, among other options. To use the tired phrase: it’s like right click “on steroids.”

Users highlight the text and an Accelerator icon appears. That in turn opens a menu with various options with what to do with the passage or text (those options can be expanded with a range of add-ons). The benefit is that information or a search result appears in a window on the page so you don’t have to open a new tab or visit another site to get the desired information.

This is a great feature; however, I was having some difficulty getting it to work on my older PC laptop (probably a function of the laptop rather than IE8).

Here’s a list of all the current Accelerator add-ons. The mapping Accelerator, one of the most useful features in my mind, allows users to lookup addresses on Live Search Maps or Yahoo Maps right on the page you’re on. So if you want to see what neighborhood a particular hotel is located in, you can do that without going “over” to a mapping site. Conspicuously absent, however, are options to use Google Maps or MapQuest.

Hopefully those options will be added in the near term.

I’m sure that Microsoft sees this and other features of IE8 as a way to grow share in various categories and expose Live Search (or whatever it becomes) to more users. So there’s some tension between using this property to advance Microsoft’s specific interests and offering a service or toolset that is fully user centric. I’m sure the developers would argue the company is trying to do the latter.

The other development I wanted to discuss is Yahoo’s “visual search shortcuts.” This operates from the search box on the browser toolbar. Yahoo must first be selected as the search provider in the IE 8 search box (Live Search is the default). If you then enter a query you see search suggestions but also “shortcuts” for certain categories of information: stocks, movie showtimes, movie reviews and weather.

Here’s an example of what you get on a lookup for the stock quote for “Yhoo”:

Like Accelerators, this feature is also very helpful in quickly getting to desired information without opening new tabs or pages. Yahoo says that it will roll out more categories of shortcuts in the future.

There are no ads in visual shortcuts for IE8 however. If one were to perform the same searches on Yahoo proper there would be, or potentially be, sponsored listings that appeared with search results.

Yahoo is launching an “integrated, nationwide, on and offline marketing campaign” to promote the “new Yahoo Search.” It emphasizes online display and radio advertising. Animated banners link to actual Yahoo Search results.  The online display campaign is promoting Search Assist and Shortcuts (vs. Google: “don’t get lost in the links”). The sample radio spot uses humor and emphasizes anti-virus protection. It also mentions Google by name.

Yahoo, Ask and Microsoft have all run past ad campaigns to try and eat into Google’s market share, almost entirely without success. The message in this campaign (from what I could tell) is that Yahoo is more efficient than Google: answers vs. links.

Despite increasing discomfort within the industry regarding Google’s size and power, there seems to be no indication from the public that they’re ready to abandon Google. In fact, Google outscored other engines in the 2008 American Consumer Satiisfaction Index.

With the right approach, however, there may be an opening and opportunity for Yahoo to gain some incremental usage.

Looking for cheap gas? Sure, the price has been falling, but drivers are still looking to save. Enter Yahoo, which has rolled out a new shortcut that maps gas stations and gas prices directly within in the search results page.

Just use the words “gas prices” or “cheap gas” followed by a ZIP code or city name, and you’ll get back a map with prices mapped. I found that using only the word “gas” with a ZIP or city name also worked. The screenshot above shows how it looked for a search on gas prices 92663.How are things at other search engines? When I looked last June, Google was listing local stations in a map but without prices. That’s still the case:

It still feels like Google is missing an opportunity here. The situation is similar with Microsoft Live Search and seems more a wasted opportunity, since MSN Autos has a gas price mapping service.

Ask has a special shortcut that links to gas price services GasBuddy and MotorTrends:

That’s better than what Google and Live Search do but still far behind Yahoo’s new feature.

Yahoo’s prices come from GasBuddy.com. My past article, Looking For Stations With Cheap Gas Prices? Search Tools To The Rescue!, goes into detail about that service and several others like it.

Annoyingly, if you click on the map at Yahoo, you can’t zoom in on what’s shown. It’s not interactive at all. And if you click on the “Gas Price” link at the top or the “more gas prices” link at the bottom of prices listed, you’ll get shunted over to one of GasBuddy’s many regional sites. In my 92663 example, that sends me to orangecountygasprices.com, where my ZIP code entry isn’t passed along. Hopefully, Yahoo will fix this, so you don’t start from scratch if you try to look for more.

I’d also like to see Yahoo, Google and Live Search send a big signal to GasBuddy that it’s just not on for them to be operating so many different “independent” sites, each clearly designed to target a regional search for gas prices. If these were all within the same gasbuddy.com domain, they wouldn’t “crowd” out other listings. But as they are all on separate domains, they push other sites aside.

For example, in a search on Google for gas prices, I get a Gas Buddy site in these positions:

• 1) gasbuddy.com
• 2) gasbuddy.com
• 3) losangelesgasprices.com
• 10) twincitiesgasprices.com
• 12) atlantagasprices.com
• 14) newyorkgasprices.com

Surely one site that Gas Buddy owns and operate per results page should be enough, shouldn’t it?

About a year ago, Yahoo created a music artist shortcut to make it easier to find quick details about artists, such as videos, photos, sample song tracks and even their official website links, directly from the search results page. Now, in partnership with online music service Rhapsody, Yahoo music shortcut results allow you to play up to 25 full songs a month rather than 30-second samples. Using Rhapsody’s catalog also expanded the number of audio files are available for playback.

To listen, click a song result and the new media player from Yahoo! Music, called FoxyPlayer will launch near the bottom of the page. You can continue browsing the results page while the player is in use or turn it off at any time with a single click.

To try out the new features, simply search for one of your favorite musical artists at Yahoo search. Yahoo says they’re rolling out the new feature over the coming few hours.

The Olympics are now officially under way. One of the unofficial competitions is among the search engines and companion sites to offer scores, updates and coverage of the games. Below is a roundup of where you can keep track of the medal count and watch your favorite action online.

Google:

Google has an Olympics homepage that showcases a range of services and tools to keep track of events, including an iGoogle gadget. Depending on what country you’re in, there are different YouTube channels. And there’s a mobile site.

Google is also offering special OneBox results for individual Olympic events. Yahoo:

Yahoo has a medal count shortcut, extensive coverage on Yahoo Sports and a dedicated mobile site.

Yahoo is also offering Olympics video clips.

Microsoft Live Search:

Microsoft is supplying Olympic updates and medal counts through a partnership with NBC. The links displayed in blended search results click through to the NBC Olympics site.

Truveo/AOL:

Truveo has extensive video coverage of the Olympics from multiple partners and sources across the internet.

Ask:

Ask offers special smart search results, pull-downs (by sport) and refinements.

In the non-search engine category, ESPN and NBC have extensive coverage on their sites. There’s also a fair amount of video on the NBC site. Reuters has some in-depth coverage as well.

The Yahoo Search Blog announced that they have launched their 2008 Summer Olympics Yahoo Search Shortcuts. Yahoo Search Shortcuts allow you to search for specific phrases and Yahoo will return an enhanced search listing with premium information.

For example, a search for Olympics medal count returns the current standings, by medals, of the 2008 Olympics. Here is a picture:

As you can image, Yahoo also has other search phrases that work with for the Summer Olympics. Here are some screen captures that demonstrate some of the many searches that work:

With automated tagging, Web links can surprise from the Associate Press reports that the Yahoo Shortcuts feature aided in placing inappropriate content on AP’s content.

Yahoo Shortcuts is a feature that allows publishers to enhance their content by adding Yahoo content around the words in the articles or blog posts. In this case, there was an AP story on the Eliot Spitzer scandal. Yahoo automatically took the phrase “underage girls,” which was used in the article, and highlighted it. If a user hovered their mouse over the words, up came images from Flickr – some containing underage girls drinking.

Here is a picture of how Yahoo Shortcuts may work on an AP article. As you can see, I hovered my mouse over the word “California” to be presented with this Yahoo Shortcut.

Google and Yahoo have been known to show inappropriate images or content algorithmically and by accident within their own properties. But this may be one of the first major reports, (outside of AdSense or Yahoo Publisher Network) where Yahoo has been faulted for showing inappropriate images or content on a third-party web site.

Yahoo told the AP that the phrase “underage girls” was “now added to a list of thousands of previously blocked terms, [and] will never again generate a Yahoo Shortcut.” Chris Sherman, the executive editor here, told the AP, “that raises the unsavory prospect that ‘underage girls’ could be among the most popular searches on Yahoo.”

The Yahoo Search Blog announced a new WordPress plugin that automatically creates Yahoo Shortcuts for the words you write in a blog post.

If you mention a stock ticker, that word on your blog will typically contain a mouse-over effect that will display a Yahoo Finance chart. Or if you have an address, they might show you a Yahoo Map. Yahoo integrated the plugin with web search, maps, finance, product search, Flickr, Yahoo Autos, news search, and more. For more details, visit http://shortcuts.yahoo.com/.

Oh, and if you are one of the first 500 bloggers to integrate this into your WordPress blog, you can get a free t-shirt.