Searching the Web with Yahoo! Yahoo!, like the Web itself, is too large to be explored entirely link by link. However, with over half a million sites divided into more than 25, 000 categories, Yahoo! is both browseable and searchable. Use these two features and you will almost always find something to match your interests. You can browse Yahoo! by simply clicking on the various categories listed on each page. Search Yahoo! by entering a word (or, a few words) into the search box that appears on every page in the directory. Combine the two strategies and you can 'browse and then search' or 'search and then browse'. Of course, a key question remains: 'When should I search Yahoo!?' You should search Yahoo! when you are looking for a website and you know its rifle. Example: You're looking for People Magazine online. Instead of browsing through the News and Media category, finding Magazines, and then finding the People Magazine in the alphabetical list, just type 'people magazine' into any search box (you don't need to capitalize the words and you don't need quotes). You should search Yahoo! when you are looking for a specific topic. Example: You're planning a vacation to Australia. Remember that Yahoo! organizes sites into categories, Those categories are organized by topic. 'Does Yahoo! have anything on the topic of Australian Travel?' Search. Type in the words 'australia travel' (no quotes, no capitals) and see what happens. One of the first results is the category. Regional: Countries: Australia: Recreation and Sports: Travel. Is that the topic you're after? Yes. Click on it. And remember: if you don't get results on your first search, modify it and try again: sometimes searching is more of an art than a science. You should search Yahoo! when you want to see where in Yahoo! a particular website is listed, Example: You love the computer game Myst You're not really interested in Myst itself, since you've already played it for 150 hours, but you are in the market for a similar product. Type 'myst' into any search box. Check the results. Click on the first category. This will take you to the Myst game category, deep within the Yahoo! Hierarchy (等级制度). Now, here's the cool part: Look at the title of the page 'Top: Recreation: Games: Computer Games: Genres: Adventure: Titles: Myst'. All the words in that title are hyperlinks except for the last one (because you are already on the Myst page). Click on the next to last word, 'Titles.' Voila! There is a whole list of computer games in the same type as Myst. So, now you know when to search Yahoo!. How about reading a search results page? That can be a tricky task for the uninitiated. Once you get the hang of it, however, it's not hard to master. Inside the Search Machine Yahoo! search looks for the following main things: Yahoo! categories, websites listed in Yahoo! Web pages indexed by Inktomi. For the first two of these, Yahoo! searches for matches in its database and then ranks the results in order of most relevant to least relevant. Some of the factors that affect relevancy are: The number of search words matched. The more words matched the higher the rank. Exact word matches. These are ranked higher than approximate matches. Where in an entry the search words were found. A match in the title of a site is ranked higher than a match in the comments or URL. Getting Results The first set of results are Yahoo! categories. Since categories are populated with Yahoo! sites, a Yahoo! category can yield hundreds or even thousands of relevant websites. That's why we put them first. Of course, if no categories match your search terms, we send you straight to the Yahoo! sites. Yahoo! sites are listed with the categor