Much like Google’s Suggest feature, Yahoo offers suggestions, as you type, for popular search queries with a feature called “Search Assist”. Today, Yahoo announced that it is trying to make its own feature that much more useful by offering near real-time suggestions when you enter a phrase into the search box.
Unlike Google, however, it looks like Yahoo gives time relevance a higher priority in its suggestion algorithm, separating the two suggestion services.
Yahoo offers an example of the new functionality in its blog post. Typing “Netherlands vs.” into Yahoo this morning will give a number of suggestions, the first of which is “Netherlands vs. Brazil”, today’s game. Google, on the other hand, offers “Netherlands vs. Mexico” as its first suggestion, never actually offering today’s game in the search suggestions.
The implication here is that Yahoo suggests the most relevant information based on what’s going on, right now, while Google suggests a search based on the number of searches, which could be hours or even days old. The fact that today’s match doesn’t even make the radar of Google Suggest is telling in how the two services differ.
Yahoo said that it will also offer similar near real-time suggestions in Yahoo News search, an obvious use for real-time search suggestions.
While Yahoo has increased the importance of real-time information in its search suggestions, Google recently took a similar step, but instead focused on localizaing its suggestions.
We have to wonder when all of the real-time information made available to Yahoo through a number of websites – including Facebook, Buzz, Flickr, YouTube, Delicious and more – will make
its way into its Search Assist results, if it hasn’t already.
