Yahoo! Adds Del.icio.us in Search Results

TechCrunch discovered that for some Yahoo! searches, they have added in links to (Yahoo!-owned) Del.icio.us bookmarks. Yahoo! does not use the Del.icio.us name. Instead, the Del.icio.us logo is followed by number and "people bookmarked this page under" whatever tags they used. See the two lines outlined in red in the screen shot.

While not all Yahoo! results have been bookmarked in Del.icio.us, this is a great combination of information from the two services. Click on the number to see what comments and notes people have written about the site when they bookmarked it. While I wish the comments would appear when I mouse over the link, it is still an incredibly easy and quick way to see what others have said about a Web page before you visit it. So how do you get Yahoo! to show the Del.icio.us information?

By default, I do not see it in regular Yahoo! results. The TechCrunch story gives a link then can then be used for additional searches. For example, try this search on reference and then just put your own terms in the search box.

Analyzing the links that result in this Del.icio.us information, it looks like the addition of &tmpl=H057 to a Yahoo! results URL is what turns this on. No preferences or options include it at this point. And this may be an experiment that does not last for long or whose syntax may change. But for now, try adding &tmpl=H057 to the end of a URL after a Yahoo! search. If you do not see any links to Del.icio.us information, it could be because none of the results have any. Or try the link above and then run your search.

I hope that Yahoo! makes it easier to enable this in the future. I would have it set to my default if I could. Unfortunately, it may not have broader appeal to those who are not familiar with Del.icio.us. Even if it is just one of the preferences that can be turned on under Options for those of us who like the display, it would be a big step forward for Yahoo!

[UPDATE 1/21/08 Oh well, that trick no longer works. I can not get the Del.icio.us information to display at all today. I hope Yahoo! turns it back on again soon. At a minimum, they ought to be able to make Del.icio.us one of the Search Subscription choices (which seems to have been abandoned for far too long anyway).