What Does Yahoo Search Assist Mean for Me?

Earlier today, Yahoo announced the launch of their new Yahoo! Search to help make search more effortless for users and consumers. The official press release from Yahoo (YHOO) states that "the new Yahoo! Search was designed to better understand user intent and get consumers to the results they are looking for in one search."

According to research conducted by Harris Interactive specifically for Yahoo, consumers are suffering from "Web Search Fatigue" and that while 99 percent of online adult users use a search engine to find information on the Internet, only 15 percent of them actually find what they are looking for on their first search.  To help combat this issue, Yahoo has released Search Assist to provide real time query suggestions as well as related topics and concepts.  If you are logged into your Yahoo account, using Yahoo Search Assist, a search for Enquiro would return the following:

If you were not logged into your Yahoo account and did a search for "enquiro" you would receive the following:

Notice the "Explore Concept" option?  It brings up phrases such as "eye tracking", "search marketing", b2b" all phrases that accurately reflect what Enquiro is about.  Very cool.  The Yahoo Search Assist and new Yahoo results page could be Yahoo's answer to Google's Universal Search as Yahoo has stated that their new results will include items such as images and video.  The new Yahoo Search is designed to provide a richer experience for the search user. The update integrates audio, video, photos, shortcuts, consumer reviews, and local information directly into the search results, with special emphasis on Yahoo properties such as their travel portal travel.yahoo.com.  Perform a search for "Las Vegas" or "New York" to see this in effect.

So what does Yahoo Search Assist Mean for You?

Well first and foremost it should mean a better search experience.  This is providing that the results returned are relevant to your search query… and why shoudn't they be?  Yahoo has done enough usability research to know that relevancy is what users are seeking.  When they perform a search looking for information, they want the results that show up to be the most relevant in terms of providing a solution to their query.  But what about user intent?  How do they know that a user searching for "Las Vegas" was looking for the NBC television program vs. a user looking to spend a fun weekend in the City of Sin?  Well according to Yahoo, with Search Assist available, users saw a 61 percent increase in task completion meaning they completed a successful search.

For website owners and search engine marketers, the New Yahoo Search means that user generated content will become more important in the genetic makeup of your site's content.  You will need to incoporate the user of user generated content such as product reviews, site reviews or the like.  The integration of user-generated content in Yahoo's results is a fairly innovative and impressive update that includes restaurant and hotel shortcuts.  Again very cool.

Web 2.0 is taking place before our eyes.  Yahoo was the last of the big 4 search engines to get on board with an actual change to their search offering.  The release of this is interesting as it was only after mere days that Microsoft announced updates to their Live Search product.  Both Google and ASK announced changed to their seacrh offering in May and June respectively.  Just when you think you have a handle on Search, the engines throw us a slight curveball.  I love it, because for me as a user of search I am getting a better user experience.  While there is always room for improvement, this is a great step into Web 2.0 and Search 2.0