Yahoo introduced redesigned search result pages yesterday. The new, simpler look adds tabs beneath the search box, allowing you to view images, video, or news or other results. Yahoo also lets you filter searches by time and trending searches.
These changes are getting to be a yearly tradition at Yahoo, as they rolled out updates around this time last year as well as 2009. Here’s a quick look at what’s new on Yahoo this year.
Yahoo Web Searches
On all Yahoo searches, you’ll see a new addition directly beneath the search box: tabs. Clicking on the tabs will take you to vertical search options that will vary depending on the query. Yahoo will return a varying number of tabs for any combination of Web, Images, Video, News, Blogs, Shopping, Sports, and Finance, all followed by and a More link to a dropdown menu containing hidden (and potentially irrelevant) tabs.
The tabs are simply a cosmetic change. In the past Yahoo linked to such vertical options above the search bar on the search results pages.
You can also filter by time (anytime, past day, past week, past month), and also see what related searches are trending.
Yahoo Image Search Results
In addition to last month’s image search enhancements, Yahoo has announced users will be able to see more Facebook images from public albums and filtering that lets you see how many hours or days ago an image was published. Other filtering options include by size, color, and license.
Yahoo News and Blog Search Results
Yahoo has added more filtering to News search results. On the left, you can sort by sources and time – though the sources filtering is pathetic, offering only 10 sources and as the above example for a “Google” search shows it’s heavily skewed toward Yahoo properties and mainstream news sites. News videos will appear in the right column on some searches above the Sponsored Results.
Blog search results weren’t specifically mentioned in Yahoo’s announcement. The only noticeable difference is the addition of an option to filter by category.
Sports Search Results
As for Yahoo’s Sports search results, now when you search for a team, Yahoo will serve up links on the left to related athletes and videos on the right side just like in news searches.
A search for “Dallas Cowboys” returns links to Sam Young (which are atrocious search results, by the way), Miles Austin, and others, but oddly not stars like Tony Romo or DeMarcus Ware. Actually, looking a bit further, Yahoo has some work to do on related athletes on all NFL searches. A quick sampling of the other major sports teams (MLB, NBA, NHL) were mostly misses as well.
Video Search Results
Yahoo’s video search offers filtering by duration, sources, relevance, and date.
Bottom Line
Yahoo says there are more changes planned, which I assume means this time next year – assuming there still is a Yahoo search as we know it, especially in light of the firing of Carol Bartz and rumors of a Yahoo sale. This redesign is mainly a case of Yahoo deciding how to filter and make their Bing-powered search results look pretty. It’s hit or miss, and ultimately won’t rip away a significant amount of Google’s market share.