Just in time for Fantasy Football, Yahoo Search has introduced a new series of Yahoo Shortcuts for the searches of NFL player names on Yahoo. Earlier in the month, Yahoo introduced Major League Baseball player shortcuts and their NFL shortcuts follow the similar fashion of player stats and links to resources, as powered by Yahoo Sports.
A search for Ray Lewis returns the defensive statistics for the Baltimore Ravens middle linebacker along with his Fantasy Sports ranking, photos, news, and scores.
Similarly, a search for Dallas Cowboys running back Julius Jones serves his offensive statistics for 2006. Yahoo will be switching to the 2007 statistics of its NFL player results once the season progresses.
When searching for Michael Vick, the Yahoo Shortcut defaults to the Yahoo News Shortcut of the Altanta Falcon Quarterback due to the news surrounding his plea in the Federal dog fighting case against him. Yahoo is also serving Yahoo Search Marketing ads above the Shortcut in the case, for advertisers or organizations looking to build awareness during the Vick controversy.
Similarly, a search for Pacman Jones shows no Shortcut, while ‘Adam Pacman Jones‘ results in a News Shortcut. I’m not sure if this is because Jones was suspended or not, but I thought it was interesting enough that a search for ‘Adam Jones‘ serves the Shortcut to the baseball player by the same name from the Seattle Mariners (although the organic results are mixed between the two players & Adam Jones, the guitarist for Tool).
Other recommendations or quirks I found in Yahoo’s NFL Shortcuts:
- No offensive linemen are listed (probably a lack of stats). Come on, gotta represent the O Line!!
- Coaches are not listed (would be nice to have bio’s and records)
- Pretty cool that Jake Plummer still serves a shortcut as his retirement is not yet official.
- Team Shortcuts need to be updated beyond the usual blue links with some images (Ask.com does a nice job of this).
