In 1996 Yahoo! enhanced its search interface to help users more quickly reach the Internet resources they need. Searches return a summary page, which presents hits in four categories: Yahoo Categories, Web Sites, Net Events (from the Yahoo Net Events site) and News (from Reuters, PR Newswire, Business Wire, and UPI). If a search comes up empty in these four categories, it will be referred to the Alta Vista search engine for an Internet-wide search. In addition, search results are now presented in order of relevance (as determined by the search engine, which may have a fairly sketchy grasp on what the user really wants) rather than alphabetically, though the user can choose an alphabetical list instead. An advanced search page allows limited Boolean operation, searching of particular Yahoo! resources, a time frame for listings, and how many matches to display per page.
Comments