Search Gets More Interactive with Entertainment Functionality

In the world of search engines, change really is inevitable. Google demonstrated that twice in the past few months with their Caffeine update and again with Google Instant. But it’s not just Google with big changes in the search world.

On October 7th, Yahoo unveiled their latest update, which is aimed to make the search experience more streamlined and visual. It also helped to improve Yahoo’s mobile search. Currently, the search results are limited to entertainment or news related topics – but, either way, it is pretty cool.

With the News aspect, you can find a variety of information all with one search. In the below example, I searched for news on the Chile Miners and got the latest news stories on the men. From there I can look at images and Twitter updates from both insiders and everyone else that is tweeting about the subject. You can also see in the gray box above the results, Yahoo is providing additional trending topics I can search for news on.

Searching for music and movies works in a similar way, but you do get a different variety of results depending on what you search for. In this example, I searched for The Social Network. The overview tab provides a snapshot of information, as well as the ability to search for show times in my area – very convenient for mobile users.

When I select ‘More details’ I can see ratings, film details, trailers, cast and credits and many more movie details – all in one convenient location.

Just like with the news story above, clicking the Twitter tab will let me see who’s tweeting about the movie, from Hollywood Insiders to everyone else who has mentioned The Social Network in a recent tweet.

The music search goes even a step further with what will display. When I look up the Rolling Stones, I get a variety of entertainment related results, which pretty much covers whatever I would be looking for related to band – albums (I can even listen to full tracks), images, videos, and of course, Twitter updates.

That’s nice, you might say, but why is Yahoo doing this? Now that Yahoo is based on the same technology as Bing, they are working to enhance the user experience and help users decide what to search, by integrating many different features that allow me to dive deeper into a search.

Integration is not uncommon. As internet users become more savvy, the search engines must evolve too. They must enhance the search experience, compete with one another to stand out, and incorporate everything into one convenient place.

Speaking of integration, on October 13, Microsoft and Facebook announced a partnership that will be bringing Facebook’s ‘Like’ data and profile search to Bing. This means that Bing users will experience Facebook’s Instant Personalization, a Facebook module that shows what your friends like when relevant to your search (such as movie titles, music artists, etc.) While you do not have to be logged into Bing to have Facebook Instant Personalization work, it does have an opt-out feature that will prompt you several times prior to making the change permanent. I personally was unable to see the results or replicate the examples from Mashable’s article, but below is an example of how Instant Personalization will work. As you can see, when a search for Iron Man is performed, two friends like this movie.

Bing is looking to utilize the social graph in order to “change the way Bing accomplishes tasks.” The purpose of the integration is to help users accomplish tasks at a quicker rate and help them make better decisions – if they see their friends like something, they may be more inclined to make a decision. With this integration, Bing will look to “harness and unlock the power of social.” With Facebook’s ever changing privacy policy, Mark Zuckerberg explains that Bing is accessing public information on their database and is not sending data back to Facebook. The Instant Personalization function can be turned off if the user chooses to. While there are no immediate plans to integrate Instant Personalization into other websites, Zuckerberg is leaving the door open.

In the every changing world of search, it comes down to enhancing the user experience and delivering the best possible results to allow the user to make an informed decision.