Yahoo Search Facts for Kids

This page is about just the search function of Yahoo!. For the web portal, see Yahoo!.

Quick facts for kids
Yahoo! Search

Type of site	Web search engine
Available in	Multilingual (40)
Owner	Yahoo Inc.
Commercial	Yes
Registration	Optional
Launched	March 2, 1995; 30 years ago (1995-03-02)
Current status	Active
Written in	PHP

Yahoo! Search is a popular search engine that helps people find information on the internet. It is owned by Yahoo! and uses Microsoft Bing to power its search results. This means that when you search on Yahoo!, the results you see are actually found by Bing's technology.

In the beginning, Yahoo! Search was a way to look through a special list of websites that Yahoo! had put together. It also used other companies' search technology, like Inktomi and later Google, to find more pages. But in 2004, Yahoo! built its own system to find and organize web pages. This made it independent.

Later, in 2009, Yahoo! and Microsoft made a deal. Bing started powering Yahoo! Search again. For a few years, from 2015 to 2018, Yahoo! used Google's search technology once more. But since late 2018, it has been powered by Microsoft Bing again.

How Yahoo! Search Started
- From Directory to Search Engine
- Building Its Own Search Technology
  - Becoming Independent in Search
  - New Features and Updates
Searching for Different Things
- What Yahoo! Search Can Find
- Special Search Tools
  - OneSearch for Mobile Phones
International Presence
- Languages Available
Images for kids
See also

How Yahoo! Search Started

From Directory to Search Engine

The idea for Yahoo! Search began with something called the Yahoo! Directory. This was like a huge online phone book for websites. It was started in 1994 by Jerry Yang and David Filo, who were students at Stanford University.

In 1995, they added a search function to the Yahoo! Directory. This allowed users to search through the listed websites. It was one of the first popular search tools on the internet. However, it wasn't a "true" Web crawler search engine at first. A web crawler is like a robot that automatically explores the internet to find new pages.

Building Its Own Search Technology

To offer better search results, Yahoo! started buying other search technology companies. In 2002, they bought Inktomi. Inktomi was a company that provided search results to other websites.

In 2003, Yahoo! also bought Overture Services, Inc.. This company owned other search engines like AlltheWeb and AltaVista. Even after buying these companies, Yahoo! still used Google's search engine for its main website for a short time.

Becoming Independent in Search

On April 7, 2003, Yahoo! Search officially became its own search engine. It combined the technology from the companies it had bought with its own research. They created a new web crawler called Yahoo!. This new search engine's results were used across all of Yahoo!'s websites.

At this time, Yahoo! also started selling its search results to other companies. This meant that Yahoo! and Google, who used to work together, became big competitors.

New Features and Updates

In October 2007, Yahoo! Search got a new, more modern look. They also added a feature called Search Assist. This tool gives you suggestions for what you might be looking for as you type. It also suggests related ideas.

In July 2008, Yahoo! Search launched a new service called Yahoo! Search BOSS. BOSS stands for "Build your Own Search Service." This service allowed computer programmers to use Yahoo!'s system to create their own special search engines.

In January 2010, Microsoft and Yahoo! made a deal for Microsoft to handle the technical side of Yahoo! Search. They also created a joint company to sell ads on both Yahoo! Search and Bing.

In March 2014, Yahoo! partnered with Yelp. This allowed Yelp's reviews and photos to show up in Yahoo! Search results.

In November 2014, Mozilla (the company behind the Firefox web browser) made Yahoo! Search the default search engine for Firefox users in the United States for five years.

In April 2015, the partnership with Microsoft changed. Yahoo! could now use other search services for some of its traffic, especially on mobile phones. This led to Yahoo! making a deal with Google again in October 2015 to provide some search and advertising services until the end of 2018. As of late 2019, Yahoo! Search is once again powered by Bing.

In September 2021, most of Yahoo! was bought by a company called Apollo Global Management.

Searching for Different Things

What Yahoo! Search Can Find

Yahoo! Search can find many types of files, not just regular web pages. It can find PDF files, Excel spreadsheets, PowerPoint presentations, Word documents, and plain text files. For some of these, Yahoo! Search even provides a "cached" link. This means you can see a saved version of the file as a regular web page.

You can also change how your search results appear. For example, you can turn on SafeSearch to filter out inappropriate content. You can also choose the language of your results or how many results appear on each page.

Special Search Tools

Yahoo! Search also offers special ways to search for specific things. These are called "search verticals." Instead of searching the whole web, you can search just for:

Images
Videos
Local businesses
Shopping items
News articles
And more!

OneSearch for Mobile Phones

In March 2007, Yahoo! launched a search system for mobile phones called OneSearch. This system was designed to give you quick, organized results on a small screen. It would show things like news headlines, pictures from Flickr, local businesses, and weather.

OneSearch would list all the results on a single page and group them into categories. For example, if you searched for a movie, it would show local theaters playing the movie, user ratings, and news about it.

In January 2020, Verizon (which owned Yahoo! at the time) launched a new version of OneSearch. This version focused on user privacy. However, it was later noted that OneSearch still pulled its results from Microsoft’s Bing search engine.

International Presence

Yahoo! Search is available in many countries around the world. It offers its search interface in at least 38 different international markets and many languages. Yahoo! has a presence in Europe, Asia, and other growing markets.