Instant Yahoo!

Recently, Yahoo! has launched a new beta Instant Search. The Yahoo! Search blog, while introducing this feature, ponders

“If search engines are so smart, why do they give you millions of results when you type in "boston weather"? Why even ten, for that matter? Why not just one? Or better yet, why not just tell me what the weather is?”

And here is their answer. The instant search works on a simple principle. Even as you type, a query is run which picks up the first search result and displays it in a balloon / bubble.

Not an entire set of pages. Just one. Similar to Google’s I’m feeling lucky feature. But you don’t need to click the search button! And Ctrl + Enter will take you to that page. (Actually Google launched a feature called Suggest, which actually suggests queries as you type. This goes a step further.)

What’s interesting is that Yahoo! has integrated more than just web search results into this. A query for India returns a set of news results. Also, searches for weather (just type “chennai weather” and see for yourself) work like a dream. However it works only on a limited set of keywords, and multiple words too. It is silent for "vijay krishna" though it returns a bubble each for vijay and krishna.


Though Yahoo! Instant Search is not as revolutionary as they would have you believe, it is well worth a try. Who knows, maybe Google might want to introduce something similar.