Yahoo! Revises Front Page Search

Last weekend, Yahoo! revised the search box on its front page. In Internet Explorer, it now shows four tabs above the longer search box: Web, Images, Yellow Pages, and Products. These options have been available for awhile from the search.yahoo.com page, but not directly from the main page. However, the link to search.yahoo.com is now gone from the main page, as is any ability to just search the Yahoo! directory. Why in the world do they not include the directory as one of the tabs? At least on the Yahoo! search page, searchers can customize which tabs appear by using the "Add or remove tabs" link, and these can directory, maps, travel, and more options.

To make it all a bit more confusing, in other browsers, these tabs are not displayed at all. Initially, other browsers did not have any access to the various search options. Then, for other browsers (such as Mozilla, Opera, and Netscape), the words "Search the Web" became a link to search.yahoo.com. At other times, these alternate browsers will get a drop down list after the search box with the four choices listed above.

So Yahoo! is continuing to work on the display. In the meantime it makes it difficult for anyone trying to teach search with Yahoo! since people will see different displays depending on their browser. And if you would like to just search the directory, try either search.yahoo.com or dir.yahoo.com.