Yahoo’s Answer to Google Instant is…Search Direct!
Yahoo! Inc. has had its challenges in dealing with its competitors, notably Google and Bing (which is also a business partner), and with declining market share. The company hopes that it has found its way out of the wilderness with Yahoo Search Direct which is being tested in beta mode in the United States before being released formally elsewhere in the world. Yahoo Search Direct is viewed as a direct challenge to Google’s search engine which instantly begins to offer search suggestions as you type inside the search box. In the case of Search Direct, just clicking inside the search box opens a dropdown box showing the latest “trending searches”. When one types into the search box, one gets different suggested keyword searches (as with Google) but also gets suggested answer sources coupled with each suggested search. The intent is to offer the user instant answers resulting from instant searching.
Yahoo signed a 10-year agreement to outsource its search to Bing after having made a similar agreement with Google from 2000-2004 after which Google became the top search engine on the planet. Yahoo Search Direct is available on the main Yahoo (U.S.) home page and can be accessed elsewhere through http://search.yahoo.com/ . Eventually, it will be accessible through other Yahoo home pages, including Canada’s.
Sources:
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