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 WordPres [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Consumer | Yahoo: APIs | Yahoo: Shortcuts

This has been a remarkable year. After years of no real dramatic evolution in search, the third generation finally arrived. Google calls it Universal Search, and I've been tending to say "blended search" as a generic name for the change that's now hit all the major search engines. But in doing the agenda for our upcoming SMX West conference, a better term for what's going on finally clicked: Search 3.0. In this article, I'll cover the why and what of Search 3.0, taking in Search 1.0 and 2.0 along the way and touch on how Search 4.0 -- personal and social refinement -- is on the way. [...]

Related Topics: Ask: Web Search | Channel: SEO | Google: OneBox, Plus Box & Direct Answers | Google: Universal Search | Microsoft: Bing | Search 3.0 | Search Features: Shortcuts | Yahoo: Shortcuts

Back in July, our Yahoo Shortcuts For Sale? article covered how Yahoo was selling some of its Yahoo Shortcuts units without -- to us -- enough disclosure. Looks like Yahoo's seen the light and now is using a "Yahoo Sponsored Shortcuts" label on these. Scott Hendison spotted the change here. Thanks, Yahoo. Here's the before: And after: See the "Yahoo! Sponsored Shortcut" text at the very bottom? That's where the change was made. [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Consumer | Yahoo: Shortcuts

Yahoo Search will be launching new Search Shortcuts for health, consumer electronics and NFL related queries. Health Yahoo will pull data for their health shortcuts from Yahoo Health and utilize their Yahoo Groups and Yahoo Answers services as well as other authoritative health sites to provide useful and quick answers to your health related searches. For example, a search on Alzheimer's returns a result that looks like this: As you can see, Yahoo links you to Yahoo Health, articles on symptoms, treatments, and medications. Plus they have links to community sites such as Yahoo Groups, Y [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Consumer | Yahoo: Search | Yahoo: Shortcuts

Yahoo has been building out much richer Shortcuts, rolling out new ones almost daily. Here are recent additions, sports and music, for example. Yahoo has also done this for some time with restaurant reviews (e.g., "Sushi, San Francisco") and more recently travel (e.g., "London"). Locallytype noticed that some hotel searches are now starting to show expandable, drop-down maps in search results. Here's an example for the Vancouver, BC Century Plaza Hotel: Interestingly, this expandable map feature doesn't always come up. Compare "Century Plaza Hotel, Los Angeles": And compare "W Hotel [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Consumer | Yahoo: Shortcuts

The Yahoo Search Blog announced a new baseball search shortcut. For example, a search on Prince Fielder, of the Milwaukee Brewers, shows up a shortcut with a picture, his number, team, real statistics for the year and fantasy league statistics, plus links to news, game log, scores, schedules and more photos and stats. Here is a picture: Note, that a search on Barry Bonds is currently showing Yahoo News results for him, because news results, in this case, override the Yahoo baseball shortcut. [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Consumer | Yahoo: Shortcuts

The Yahoo Search Blog has announced that they have added new Yahoo Travel shortcuts. If you search on a travel destination, such as Jerusalem, up comes a shortcut box with travel related information. It looks like this: In this pretty shortcut, you are given information on the destination including: Visitor Guide Hotels Restaurant Guides Maps Travel Options Top Rated Things To Do Slide Show of Pictures and more... Other example searches that work include Paris, Hanoi or Sydney. But there are hundreds US and international destinations that currently work, plus they plan on adding more [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Consumer | Yahoo: Search | Yahoo: Shortcuts

Scott Hendison found an interesting Yahoo Shortcut that appears to have been sold. A search on special k at Yahoo Search returns this Yahoo Shortcut, which contains the Special K logo: This was submitted to Sphinn, where Danny Sullivan said: It's kind of disturbing, really. If this is a paid promotion, the FTC wants that stuff labeled as such. Yahoo just calls it a "Yahoo Shortcut" and points you here. Nothing on that page talks about them being for sale. Should Yahoo follow Google and label this type of shortcut or special placement as a "promotion?" Postscript: Turns out, the Yahoo Sh [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Consumer | Yahoo: Shortcuts

The Yahoo Search blog has reported that Yahoo has now integrated their new music lyrics database into the Yahoo search results. If you perform a search on neil young lyrics at Yahoo, you will see a Yahoo Shortcut for "Neil Young Lyrics - Music Results." If you click on the top link it takes you to Yahoo Music Lyrics page for Neil Young. The searches also work for some song titles with appending "lyrics" to the end, but not all (for example, hotel california lyrics comes up with nothing). The Yahoo Shortcuts page itself doesn't yet provide help information about the feature. Ask.com also [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Consumer | Search Features: Shortcuts | Yahoo: Music | Yahoo: Shortcuts

The Yahoo Search Blog announced they have improved their movie shortcuts to add more information. The added information includes, movie trailers, user and critic ratings, a brief summary, and movie showtimes. For example, a search on Dreamgirls, 10025 brings up this Yahoo Shortcut. Of course other search engines offer similar results. + Google Dreamgirls, 10025 result + Ask.com Dreamgirls + Live.com Dreamgirls, 10025 Older screenshot shows a bug, but it is now fixed. The bug did not show the local show times based on the zip code... [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Consumer | Search Features: Shortcuts | Yahoo: Shortcuts

Yahoo! Shortcuts must be working for searchers and for Yahoo! Starting last week, I noticed Yahoo prompting me a lot more to search for retailer coupons, flights from city to city and movie showtimes - all which trigger a Yahoo Shortcut. While shortcuts have been around for a while, this is the first time I remember Yahoo prompting me over and over use them before I've completed a search. I've gotten used to getting this after a generic search: But these showed up when I went to search.yahoo.com or my.yahoo.com: If you want to learn more about these vertical search results creepi [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Consumer | Search Features: Shortcuts | Yahoo: Shortcuts