Yahoo has released another potentially useful tool called Instant Search http://instant.search.yahoo.com/ - which the Yahoo Search Blog defines as:

And that’s what led us to develop Instant Search, which went into beta today on our next.yahoo.com site. As you type your search into the Instant Search box, it checks to see if there is a single, relevant answer for your query. If there is, that single result instantly appears on the page, just below the search box in a kind of “speech bubble”.

I used the word “potentially” because this tool works best in very specific search situations which might be served by going directly to the domain. I’ll do searches by domain on some obvious things like weather (weather.com). I wonder if the ultimate plan will be to integrate this with the full on Yahoo search. It would be useful there for trying to determine one search result as you type. I do think if they do that it should make it user-defined. Ramming it down users throats with no on/off switch would be ill-advised, IMO.

Functionality
Worked error-free in recent versions of Firefox and IE. I didn’t test on Safari, but I saw one Safari user reporting that it worked fine there. AJAX fans will groove on this type of app and it’s a pretty good use of dynamic user interaction.

A few of my own test results
Puyallup weather - the weather nearby (pictured above)
Safeco Field - no result for a major sports landmark in Seattle
Space Needle - resulted in spaceneedle.com.
nfl - nfl.com (doh!)
apple - apple.com
apples - Washington Apple Commission (bestapples.com). Didn’t realize there even was an apple commision.

Seems like an extra step to go to a search engine to search for a company, like I’m sure people looking for Apple, the company, will try apple.com first. As for the weather, the movies and other local activities or when planning trips, I see some use for a tool like this.

Others are saying
Ken Leebow: “Yahoo! : Way to go!”
Erin Bradley tested movies, weather, dictionary, definitions and mathematical equations and “… all returned exactly what I was looking for on the first time around. It’s a wee bit slow, but I could definitely see myself using it every day.”
Greg Linden (hey, you’re nearby, Greg, cool!) thinks the algorithm needs “a little work.” I agree.
Charlene Li likens the search to snap.com’s home page where “the search categories change as you type each letter. Snap.com also shows news stories on the side.”

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