Yahoo Puts Bang Into Search

Yahoo Puts Bang Into Search

By David A. Utter
Staff Writer
Article Date: 2005-12-20

Tis the season to wait in traffic, wait for a parking space, wait in line; holidays can be such a weight on a person. Yahoo has delivered a better bang for getting search results, so people don't have to spend as long typing.

For the non-programmers out there, this ! is called an exclamation point. Those who have spent too much time on the command line or writing Perl scripts know it as a "bang." Yahoo's latest post on its Search Blog discussed how ! figures in its new Search Shortcuts.

Yahoo's Open Shortcuts, currently in beta, help get searchers from the search box to a site or start a task quickly. Users can create their own shortcuts to accomplish a variety of tasks, as Yahoo described:

Instantly navigate to any URL on the Internet
Easily recall common searches on Yahoo!
Quickly search favorite sites
Jump start frequently used Internet applications

We already developed a few Open Shortcuts to demonstrate how you might use them:

Navigation example, type: !my to navigate to "http://my.yahoo.com"
Common Searches example, type: !wsf to search "weather san francisco" on Yahoo!
Search example, type: !wiki rozier to search for "rozier" on Wikipedia
Application example, type: !mail bill@yahoo.com to compose a Y! Mail to "bill@yahoo.com"

User-created shortcuts can be saved under their profiles, and retrieved by typing !list in the search box.

So Y wait longer than necessary?

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About the Author:
David Utter is a staff writer for WebProNews covering technology and business.