Yahoo! Search is a

search engine A search engine is a software system that provides hyperlinks to web pages, and other relevant information on World Wide Web, the Web in response to a user's web query, query. The user enters a query in a web browser or a mobile app, and the sea ...

owned and operated by

Yahoo! Yahoo (, styled yahoo''!'' in its logo) is an American web portal that provides the search engine Yahoo Search and related services including My Yahoo, Yahoo Mail, Yahoo News, Yahoo Finance, Yahoo Sports, y!entertainment, yahoo!life, and its a ...

, using

Microsoft Bing Microsoft Bing (also known simply as Bing) is a search engine owned and operated by Microsoft. The service traces its roots back to Microsoft's earlier search engines, including MSN Search, Windows Live Search, and Live Search. Bing offers a ...

to power results. Originally, "Yahoo! Search" referred to a Yahoo!-provided interface that sent queries to a searchable index of pages supplemented with its directory of

website A website (also written as a web site) is any web page whose content is identified by a common domain name and is published on at least one web server. Websites are typically dedicated to a particular topic or purpose, such as news, educatio ...

s. The results were presented to the user under the Yahoo! brand. The actual web crawling and data housing was not done by Yahoo! itself – in 2001, the searchable index was powered by

Inktomi Inktomi Corporation was an American Internet service provider (ISP) software developer based in Foster City, California. Customers included Microsoft, HotBot, Amazon.com, eBay, and Walmart. The company developed Traffic Server, a proxy se ...

and later by

Google Google LLC (, ) is an American multinational corporation and technology company focusing on online advertising, search engine technology, cloud computing, computer software, quantum computing, e-commerce, consumer electronics, and artificial ...

until 2004, when Yahoo! built its own crawler, becoming independent. On July 29, 2009,

Microsoft Microsoft Corporation is an American multinational corporation and technology company, technology conglomerate headquartered in Redmond, Washington. Founded in 1975, the company became influential in the History of personal computers#The ear ...

and Yahoo! announced a deal in which Bing would henceforth power Yahoo! Search, putting an end to Yahoo!'s in-house crawler. For four years between 2015 until the end of 2018, it was powered by Google, before returning to Microsoft Bing again. As of July 2018, Microsoft Sites handled 24.2 percent of all desktop search queries in the United States. During the same period of time,

Oath Traditionally, an oath (from Old English, Anglo-Saxon ', also a plight) is a utterance, statement of fact or a promise taken by a Sacred, sacrality as a sign of Truth, verity. A common legal substitute for those who object to making sacred oaths ...

(the then-owner of the Yahoo brand) had a search

market share Market share is the percentage of the total revenue or sales in a Market (economics), market that a company's business makes up. For example, if there are 50,000 units sold per year in a given industry, a company whose sales were 5,000 of those ...

of 11.5 percent. Market leader Google generated 63.2 percent of all core search queries in the United States.

Search technology acquisition

The roots of Search date back to Yahoo! Directory, which was launched in 1994 by Jerry Yang and David Filo, then students at

Stanford University Leland Stanford Junior University, commonly referred to as Stanford University, is a Private university, private research university in Stanford, California, United States. It was founded in 1885 by railroad magnate Leland Stanford (the eighth ...

. In 1995, they introduced a

function, called Yahoo! Search, that allowed users to search Yahoo! Directory. it was the first popular search engine on the Web, despite not being a true

Web crawler Web crawler, sometimes called a spider or spiderbot and often shortened to crawler, is an Internet bot that systematically browses the World Wide Web and that is typically operated by search engines for the purpose of Web indexing (''web spider ...

search engine. They later licensed Web search engines from other companies. Seeking to provide its own Web search engine results, Yahoo! acquired their own Web search technology. In 2002, they bought

, a "behind the scenes" or OEM search engine provider, whose results are shown on other companies' websites and powered Yahoo! in its earlier days. In 2003, they purchased Overture Services, Inc., which included the AlltheWeb and

AltaVista AltaVista was a web search engine established in 1995. It became one of the most-used early search engines, but lost ground to Google and was purchased by Yahoo! in 2003, which retained the brand, but based all AltaVista searches on its own sear ...

search engines. Initially, even though Yahoo! owned multiple search engines, they didn't use them on the main yahoo.com website, but kept using Google's search engine for its results. Starting on April 7, 2003, Yahoo! Search became its own

web crawler Web crawler, sometimes called a spider or spiderbot and often shortened to crawler, is an Internet bot that systematically browses the World Wide Web and that is typically operated by search engines for the purpose of Web indexing (''web spider ...

-based search engine. They combined the capabilities of search engine companies they had acquired and their prior research into a reinvented crawler called ''Yahoo!''. The new search engine results were included in all of Yahoo's websites that had a web search function. Yahoo! also started to sell the search engine results to other companies, to show on their own websites. Their relationship with Google was terminated at that time, with the former partners becoming each other's main competitors. In October 2007, Yahoo! Search was updated with a more modern appearance in line with the redesigned Yahoo! home page. In addition, ''Search Assist'' was added; which provides real-time query suggestions and related concepts as they are typed. In July 2008, Yahoo! Search announced the introduction of a new service called Yahoo! Search BOSS ("Build your Own Search Service"). This service opens the doors for developers to use Yahoo!'s system for indexing information and images and create their own custom search engine. In January 2010, Microsoft announced a deal in which it would take over the functional operation of Yahoo! Search, and set up a joint venture to sell advertising on both Yahoo! Search and

Bing Bing most often refers to: * Bing Crosby (1903–1977), American singer * Microsoft Bing, a web search engine Bing may also refer to: Food and drink * Bing (bread), a Chinese flatbread * Bing (soft drink), a UK brand * Bing cherry, a varie ...

known as the Microsoft Search Alliance. A complete transition of all Yahoo! sponsored ad clients to Microsoft adCenter (now Bing Ads) occurred in October 2010. On March 12, 2014, Yahoo! announced a partnership with Yelp to integrate its reviews and user-contributed photos into Yahoo! Search (as Bing had previously done). In November 2014, Mozilla signed a five-year partnership with Yahoo, making Yahoo Search the default search engine for

Firefox Mozilla Firefox, or simply Firefox, is a free and open-source web browser developed by the Mozilla Foundation and its subsidiary, the Mozilla Corporation. It uses the Gecko rendering engine to display web pages, which implements curr ...

browsers in the US. In April 2015, the Microsoft partnership was modified, now only requiring Bing results on the "majority" of desktop traffic, opening the ability for Yahoo to enter into non-exclusive deals for search services on mobile platforms and the remainder of desktop traffic. The amendment also gives either company the ability to terminate the contract with four months' notice. In October 2015, Yahoo subsequently reached an agreement with

to provide services to Yahoo Search through the end of 2018, including advertising, search, and image search services. As of October 2019, Yahoo! Search is once again powered by Bing. In September 2021,

investment fund An investment fund is a way of investment, investing money alongside other investors in order to benefit from the inherent advantages of working as part of a group such as reducing the risks of the investment by a significant percentage. These ad ...

s managed by the private equity firm

Apollo Global Management Apollo Global Management, Inc. is an American asset management firm that primarily invests in alternative assets. , the company had $548 billion of assets under management, including $392 billion invested in credit, including mezzanine capita ...

acquired 90% of Yahoo.

International presence

Yahoo! Search also provided their search interface in at least 38 international markets and a variety of available languages. Yahoo! has a presence in Europe, Asia and across the Emerging Markets.

Languages

Arabic Arabic (, , or , ) is a Central Semitic languages, Central Semitic language of the Afroasiatic languages, Afroasiatic language family spoken primarily in the Arab world. The International Organization for Standardization (ISO) assigns lang ...

* Bulgarian * Catalan *

Chinese (Simplified) Simplified Chinese characters are one of two standardized character sets widely used to write the Chinese language, with the other being traditional characters. Their mass standardization during the 20th century was part of an initiative by th ...

Chinese (Traditional) Traditional Chinese characters are a standard set of Chinese character forms used to write Chinese languages. In Taiwan, the set of traditional characters is regulated by the Ministry of Education and standardized in the ''Standard Form of N ...

* Croatian *

Czech Czech may refer to: * Anything from or related to the Czech Republic, a country in Europe ** Czech language ** Czechs, the people of the area ** Czech culture ** Czech cuisine * One of three mythical brothers, Lech, Czech, and Rus *Czech (surnam ...

* Danish * Dutch * English * Estonian * Finnish * French * German *

Greek Greek may refer to: Anything of, from, or related to Greece, a country in Southern Europe: *Greeks, an ethnic group *Greek language, a branch of the Indo-European language family **Proto-Greek language, the assumed last common ancestor of all kno ...

Hebrew Hebrew (; ''ʿÎbrit'') is a Northwest Semitic languages, Northwest Semitic language within the Afroasiatic languages, Afroasiatic language family. A regional dialect of the Canaanite languages, it was natively spoken by the Israelites and ...

* Hungarian * Icelandic * Indonesian * Italian * Japanese * Korean * Latvian * Lithuanian * Malay * Norwegian * Persian * Polish * Portuguese * Romanian * Russian * Serbian * Slovak * Slovenian * Spanish * Swedish * Tagalog * Thai * Turkish * Vietnamese

Yahoo Image Search Results Languages

Yahoo Image Search Results in 24 languages * English * Spanish * Turkish * Tagalog *

* Swedish * Vietnamese * Malay * Chinese,

Traditional Chinese A tradition is a system of beliefs or behaviors (folk custom) passed down within a group of people or society with symbolic meaning or special significance with origins in the past. A component of cultural expressions and folklore, common examp ...

and

Simplified Chinese Simplification, Simplify, or Simplified may refer to: Mathematics Simplification is the process of replacing a mathematical expression by an equivalent one that is simpler (usually shorter), according to a well-founded ordering. Examples include: ...

*Other languages

Search results

Yahoo Search indexed and cached the common HTML page formats, as well as several of the more popular file-types, such as

PDF Portable document format (PDF), standardized as ISO 32000, is a file format developed by Adobe Inc., Adobe in 1992 to present documents, including text formatting and images, in a manner independent of application software, computer hardware, ...

, Excel spreadsheets, PowerPoint presentations, Word documents, RSS/XML and plain text files. For some of these supported file-types, Yahoo! Search provided cached links on their search results allowing for viewing of these file-types in standard HTML. Using the Advanced Search interface or Preferences settings, Yahoo Search allowed the customization of search results and enabling of certain settings such as: SafeSearch, Language Selection, Number of results, Domain restrictions, etc. For a Basic and starter guide to Yahoo Search, they also provided a ''Search Basics'' tutorial. In 2005, Yahoo began to provide links to previous versions of pages archived on the

Wayback Machine The Wayback Machine is a digital archive of the World Wide Web founded by Internet Archive, an American nonprofit organization based in San Francisco, California. Launched for public access in 2001, the service allows users to go "back in ...

. In the first week of May 2008, Yahoo launched a new search paradigm called ''Yahoo Glue''. Yahoo! Search was criticized in 2020 for favoring websites owned by Yahoo!'s then-parent company,

Verizon Media Verizon Communications Inc. ( ), is an American telecommunications company headquartered in New York City. It is the world's second-largest telecommunications company by revenue and its mobile network is the largest wireless carrier in the ...

, in its search results.

Selection-based search

On June 20, 2007, Yahoo introduced a selection-based search feature called Yahoo Shortcuts. When activated this selection-based search feature enabled users to invoke search using only their mouse and receive search suggestions in floating windows while remaining on Yahoo properties such as Yahoo Mail. This feature was only active on Yahoo web pages or pages within the Yahoo Publisher Network. Yahoo Shortcuts required the content-owner to modify the underlying HTML of his or her webpage to call out the specific keywords to be enhanced. The technology for context-aware selection-based search on Yahoo pages was first developed by Reiner Kraft.

SearchScan

On May 11, 2008, Yahoo introduced SearchScan. If enabled this add-on/feature enhanced Yahoo Search by automatically alerting users of

viruses A virus is a submicroscopic infectious agent that replicates only inside the living cells of an organism. Viruses infect all life forms, from animals and plants to microorganisms, including bacteria and archaea. Viruses are found in almo ...

spyware Spyware (a portmanteau for spying software) is any malware that aims to gather information about a person or organization and send it to another entity in a way that harms the user by violating their privacy, endangering their device's securit ...

and

spam Spam most often refers to: * Spam (food), a consumer brand product of canned processed pork of the Hormel Foods Corporation * Spamming, unsolicited or undesired electronic messages ** Email spam, unsolicited, undesired, or illegal email messages ...

websites.

Search verticals

Yahoo Search provided the ability to search across numerous vertical properties outside just the Web at large. These included Images, Videos, Local, Shopping, Yahoo! Answers, Audio, Directory, Jobs, News, Mobile, Travel and various other services as listed on their ''About Yahoo Search'' page.

OneSearch

OneSearch Yahoo introduced its Internet search system, called OneSearch, for mobile phones on March 20, 2007. The results include news headlines, images from Flickr, business listings, local weather and links to other sites. Instead of showing only, for example, popular movies or some critical reviews, OneSearch lists local theaters that at the moment are playing the movie, along with user ratings and news headlines regarding the movie. A zip code or city name is required for OneSearch to start delivering local search results. The results of a Web search are listed on a single page and are prioritized into categories. As of 2012, Yahoo used Novarra's mobile content transcoding service for OneSearch. OneSearch On January 14, 2020, Verizon announced the launch of its privacy-focused

OneSearch. OneSearch was criticized for favoring websites owned by Yahoo!'s then-parent company,

, in its search results. "EFF Privacy Badger (a browser extension that detects cookies) discovered a tracker connected to Yahoo’s image search engine...Verizon owns Yahoo... OneSearch actually pulls all of its search results from Microsoft’s Bing search engine. " Verizon was fined $1.3 million for using super cookie trackers. www.onesearch.com is excluded from the

.Unknown
/ref> *onesearch.wesleyan.edu *onesearch.library.utoronto.ca *onesearch.slq.qld.gov.au *onesearch.library.uwa.edu.au *onesearch.library.northeastern.edu *onesearch.lancaster-university.uk *onesearch.id *onesearch.cuny.edu *onesearch.library.nd.edu *onesearch.fitnyc.edu *onesearch.library.wwu.edu

References

External links

* {{PHP

Search Searching may refer to: Music * "Searchin', Searchin", a 1957 song originally performed by The Coasters * Searching (China Black song), "Searching" (China Black song), a 1991 song by China Black * Searchin' (CeCe Peniston song), "Searchin" (C ...

Multilingual websites Internet search engines IOS software Android (operating system) software Internet properties established in 1995