Yahoo Puts Bang Into Search

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? Email the author here. Add to document.write("Del.icio.us") | Yahoo My Web David Utter is a staff writer for murdok covering technology and business.