Yahoo Search Shortcuts on the Yahoo Search Blog
Today Adam Durfee, Product Manager at Yahoo! Search, on Yahoo’s Search Blog (YSearchBlog.com) wrote up a nice little review on Yahoo Search Shortcuts. “One of the items I work on is Yahoo! Shortcuts. A Yahoo! Shortcut is a quick way to use web search to get to the information you want, ideally faster than combing through the web results. Shortcuts results appear automatically when they’re relevant to your search and link to content on Yahoo! or across the web. That’s a bit of an awkward description, so let’s get a better definition and see a shortcut in action.”
Adam goes on to discuss the functionality of Yahoo Shortcuts and lists a basic group of such quick searches. “Back to the definition of “a more direct route”, there are a number of patterns or key words you can use to get results from other areas of Yahoo!. Looking at the tabs across the top of the search box:
* Images: “photos” or “pictures” in a web query will give 4 images and a link to all Yahoo! Image Search results. Example: “puppy pictures” (a favorite of my wife)
* Video: “video” or “videos” in the query gives a link to all Yahoo! Video Search results. Example: “brad pitt videos” (another favorite of my wife)
* Directory: some terms will trigger links to the Yahoo! Directory’s pages of categorized sites. Example: “History”
* Local: a pattern of [city] [state] [business name / type] will give 3 results from Yahoo! Local plus a link to all results. Example: “San Francisco ca plumbers”
* News: “news” in the query will gives three news headlines via Yahoo! News and a link to all results. Example: “Iraq news”
* Products: various products or categories of products queries will give links to Yahoo! Shopping. Example: “digital cameras”, “canon powershot”
A full list of Yahoo Search Shortcuts is available as is a list of shortcuts for mobile devices.
