The Hindu Business Line : Yahoo! promises spicier search

Soon, you will be given a variety of options when you search for a keyword - if you queried for a location and, say, temperature, the search would intelligently give you a small graphic that would show you the weather conditions.

Or if you asked for the time there, a time-zone difference and world clock would pop up as a result. Say you searched for Domino's and your city, a map would be presented, showing you its location. Or if you searched for a pop star like Justin Timberlake, his snaps would be presented, along with links to his discography. These tricks are obtained by combining different products with search engine.

These are in progress now and will be available soon, according to Mr Andrew Tomkins, Director (Search Research), Yahoo!

He was speaking on Thursday in the city in a lecture that was part of Yahoo!'s Big Thinker series.

He also spoke on the trend of incorporating and ranking user-generated content alongside traditional algorithmic search results.

Tags - descriptive words introduced by the user uploading the content - will complement the currently used "keywords" in search.

Tags will be useful especially while searching for images or videos, said Mr Tomkins.

India will see a mix of these products only when each of the products is complete.

The first of these integrations could be maps, which was launched last week.

"We can expect a richer search experience soon, as and when the products are released," said Mr Rishi Behal, Director (Search), Yahoo! Web Services India.