• Yahoo And The Incredibly Expanding Accordion Search Box

    Wednesday, October 6th, 2010

    Erick Schonfeld is a technology journalist and the former Editor in Chief of TechCrunch. At TechCrunch, he oversaw the editorial content of the site, helped to program the Disrupt conferences and CrunchUps, produced TCTV shows, and wrote daily for the blog. He joined TechCrunch as Co-Editor in 2007, and helped take it from a popular blog to a thriving... → Learn More

    Google has Google Instant. Bing has guided search and (soon) swimming whale videos on its home page. Yahoo, well, Yahoo now has an expanding accordion search box. Starting today, when you do searches related to music, movies, or news, a set of results will be packaged together at the top in a box with vertical tabs along the side. It is similar to Google’s Universal Search Onebox and the Bing Box, except that the vertical tabs create four or five expanding search boxes in one.

    When you do a search for “Lady Gaga,” for instance, the default box is an overview with an excerpt from her bio, link to her official site, and photos, but there are also tabs for nearby events, albums, videos, and Twitter. The Twitter tab is further divided into her official Tweets, Tweets from Hollywood Insiders, and Tweets from “Everyone” (although it is not really from everyone, Yahoo filters out spam and bots).

    Similarly, for news, the tabs are divided into stories, images, videos, and Twitter. And for movies, you get an overview with links to trailers, and a tab with showtimes near you. Yahoo also has a partnership with Netflix to link directly to that movie on Netflix, where it can be added to your queue. (Yahoo won’t get paid for each movie that people add to their Netflix list, but will get paid a bounty for new members who sign up for Netflix). These tabs will also be for sale to search advertisers who may want to sponsor one.

    If you do a search for a trending search topic, chances are you will get a slideshow in the search box, along with photo sand information. (Yahoo loves search-generated slideshows). Yahoo is also adding slideshow results to its image search. The top result will now often show a box with related slideshows from different public domain image banks such as Flickr.

    Finally, Yahoo’s mobile search is adopting HTML5 so that it can show better looking tabs, image search results, and stock charts when applicable.

    Company: Yahoo!
    Website: yahoo.com
    Launch Date: January 1, 1994
    IPO: December 4, 1996, Nasdaq:YHOO

    Yahoo was founded in 1994 by Stanford Ph.D. students David Filo and Jerry Yang. It has since evolved into a major internet brand with search, content verticals, and other web services. Yahoo! Inc. (Yahoo!), incorporated in 1995, is a global Internet brand. To users, the Company provides owned and operated online properties and services (Yahoo! Properties, Offerings, or Owned and Operated sites). Yahoo! also extends its marketing platform and access to Internet users beyond Yahoo! Properties through its distribution network...

    Learn more
    Company: Google
    Website: google.com
    Launch Date: September 7, 1998
    IPO: NASDAQ:GOOG

    Google provides search and advertising services, which together aim to organize and monetize the world’s information. In addition to its dominant search engine, it offers a plethora of online tools and platforms including: Gmail, Maps, YouTube, and Google+, the company’s extension into the social space. Most of its Web-based products are free, funded by Google’s highly integrated online advertising platforms AdWords and AdSense. Google promotes the idea that advertising should be highly targeted and relevant to users thus providing...

    Learn more
    Product: Bing
    Website: bing.com
    Company Microsoft

    Bing is a decision (search) engine from Microsoft officially announced on May 28, 2009. It combines technology from the Farecast and Powerset acquisitions, as well as new algorithms and a more colorful page design, to attempt to understand the context behind the search, which Microsoft claims gives users better results. Bing as a brand is also an attempt to eliminate the confusion caused by Microsoft’s “Windows Live” branding. Bing is now everything “search” related, whereas Windows Live encompasses the remnants...

    Learn more

    Sponsored Ads

    blog comments powered by Disqus

    Sponsored Ads

    Sponsored Ads

    Upcoming Events

    Disrupt SF 2012

    San Francisco, CA