Many of us use search engines in the same way we we use street signs. We use them to navigate, to get our bearings, and to pinpoint our destination. We rarely stop to consider the signs themselves or look for more information they might be telling us. As with street signs, we’d be lost without search engines, and by taking a few minutes to contemplate the Yahoo! Web Search results page, you might find new ways to reach your destination.
Take a look at Figure 1-1, which shows a Yahoo! Web Search results page for the query ancient greece.
You can see the familiar numbered listing of search results, but there are a number of other bits of information on the page. Here’s a look at what’s available on a Yahoo! Search results page:
- Navigation bar
You’ll find the gray navigation bar at the top of the page on many pages at Yahoo! sites. The bar provides a consistent way to get to the main Yahoo! page (http://www.yahoo.com), the My Yahoo! portal [Hack #34] , and Yahoo! Mail [Hack #52] . The bar also indicates your login status by displaying your Yahoo! ID [Hack #3] or Guest, along with links that let you sign in to Yahoo! or sign out. You can also click the Help link at the far right of the navigation bar to read documentation about the site.
- Search links
Just above the search form, you’ll find links to other Yahoo! searches, including Images, Video [Hack #11] , the Yahoo! Directory [Hack #20] , Yahoo! News [Hack #32] , and Yahoo! Shopping [Hack #47] . You can click any of these search links to search with the exact query you used at one of the other Yahoo! Search properties so that you don’t have to retype your search term.
- Result count
Search results are returned as a number of pages, and you’ll find your position within the results in the shaded blue bar. For instance, the first page of results will be labeled as Results 1–10, the second page will show Results 11–20, and so on. (You can adjust the number of results per page by setting your search preferences [Hack #4] .) You’ll also see the estimated total number of results for your query.
- Query definition links
Just to the right of the result count, you’ll see the words in the query as links. You can click the links to see dictionary definitions of the words at Yahoo! Reference [Hack #40] .
- Search speed
The shaded blue bar will also show you how long it took to fetch the results, usually less than a half-second.
- Sponsor results
You’ll find context-sensitive advertising along the right side of the page and in a shaded blue box above or below the Yahoo! Web Search results. Advertising is always clearly labeled Sponsor Results, and the type of ads will be triggered by the topic you’re searching for.
- Search suggestions
Search phrases similar to the one you entered are labeled with Also Try: at the top of the page. These suggestions show you what other Yahoo! users are searching for related to your topic and can help you refine your search. Yahoo! will display the top few suggestions, and if there are several suggestions you can click the More or Show All links to see a complete list of suggestions available.
- Yahoo! shortcut info
If your query triggered a Yahoo! Shortcut [Hack #2] , the shortcut info will be shown above the Web results and marked with the Y! logo. Shortcuts usually give you brief information about your query, with links to more information at other Yahoo! properties.
- Web results
The Web Search results show the familiar list of documents from across the Web, which contain your query words or phrases. Each result is numbered and includes the document title, a brief excerpt with query words in bold, and the document location.
- Results page
Below the Web Search results you can navigate between results pages by clicking a page number or the Prev and Next links.
Each Yahoo! Web Search result represents a document somewhere on the Web. The document will most likely be a web page written in HTML, but could be in another format such as Adobe PDF, Microsoft Word, or plain text. Figure 1-2 shows a typical Yahoo! Web Search result with all of the associated links and features.
A closer look at a Web Search result shows that there’s more listed than simply a document title and excerpt. Here’s a look at what you’ll find with each result:
- Document title
The document title is pulled from the document itself, either from HTML <
title> tags within the document or from the first few words in the document. Click the title to view the page or document.- New window link
To the right of the title is an icon showing two windows that you can click to open the document in a new browser window. This option is handy for keeping your search results in place while you read through pages of the results in different windows.
- Document excerpt
Just below the title, you’ll find an excerpt of text from the document with words or phrases from your query in bold. This helps you determine the context of your search phrase and can tell you quickly whether the document is relevant.
- Category
If the document or page is listed in the Yahoo! Directory, you’ll see the category that page is listed in. You can click the category title to see that category and view other sites that Yahoo! Editors have chosen to include in the directory.
- RSS
Many web publishers associate an RSS feed with their sites, which allows readers to subscribe to site updates in programs called Newsreaders or at sites such as My Yahoo! that pull content from other sources. When Yahoo! detects the presence of a site feed, you’ll find a link to view that feed as raw XML or add the feed to My Yahoo! with a click.
- URL
On the last line of the listing, you’ll see the document URL in green with any words from your query in bold. This tells you the domain the document is hosted under, and you can tell from the top-level domain (.com, .edu, .gov, etc.) whether the site is run by a business, a school, or the U.S. government.
- Size in bytes
Many results (such as those listed earlier in Figure 1-1) show the size of the document in bytes, which can give you a rough idea of how long the page will take to download. Web pages are usually fairly quick, but Microsoft Word documents or Adobe PDF files might vary widely in size.
- Cache
If Yahoo! has a copy of the document saved on its servers, you can click the Cached link to view the copy. This is particularly useful if the site isn’t responding, as you can still get to an archived copy of the information.
- Other pages
The “More from this site” link will show you other pages at the domain that match your query.
- My Web links
Yahoo!’s My Web [Hack #7] lets you save sites that you want to remember, or block sites that you never want to see in results again. You can use the Save and Block links to add or remove documents.
Once you’re aware of all the features of the Yahoo! Web Search results page, you can make decisions about the best path to the information you’re after.
This chapter shows you how to take advantage of Yahoo! Web Search in a number of different ways—from using meta keywords for quick answers [Hack #1] to viewing results in a radically different way [Hack #77] .
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