All of the talk surrounding Yahoo!’s new Search Assistant is warranted - it’s very cool! I was lucky enough to be “selected” as a tester and I’ve spent quite a bit of time playing around with it. I’m a little bummed that it only seems to be compatible with Internet Explorer for now… but I’ll get over it.

As Search Engine Land pointed out, Yahoo!’s regular Search Suggest is already being used for all visitors to yahoo.com (search.yahoo.com has yet to get the feature). But this isn’t the only example of Yahoo! Search Suggest in action. My favorite new search engine to use is an experimental interface Yahoo! has created around it’s AlltheWeb property called Livesearch.

Much like Search Suggest or Search Assistant, AlltheWeb Livesearch makes suggestions about what you could be looking for. In fact, in side-by-side comparisons, the suggestions are identical to those you’d see in either of the other services.

So what makes Livesearch different from Yahoo!’s other suggestion services?

The thing I love about AlltheWeb Livesearch is that it allows you to easily flip through the different suggestions without “losing” them. When Yahoo!’s standard Search Suggest drops down you have to choose one of the suggestions and run with it. If you want to try a different one you either have to re-trigger the search suggestion or use one of the “Also try” options on the SERP.

AlltheWeb Livesearch is different because the suggestions appear in a dynamically changing sidebar instead of a drop down. Clicking on one of the suggestions loads the SERP in the right-hand part of the screen dynamically - but your suggestions all remain in the sidebar. You can easily flip between the suggestions without losing any of the other ones. If, for example, you want to compare the results from two different suggestions, it’s as easy and clicking back and forth between the two.

This is also handy for finding the exact search results you want. If a search for “lego” returns a bunch of results that you don’t really need, “lego games” might be a better match - and you can easily check it out before committing to the change.

What’s more, the suggestions dynamically update as you change the word or phrase in the search box. If, for example, you search for “lego”, you’ll get suggestions and SERPs based on that search. But if you then decide you really want to focus on “lego games”, changing the primary search term to “lego games” not only updates the SERP automatically, but also pulls a totally new set of suggestions.

AlltheWeb uses Yahoo!’s excellent index and search algorithm so it’s quite functional as a default search engine. In fact, I’ve migrated all of browser start pages at home and work to AlltheWeb Livesearch. It’s worked so well for me that I find myself using Google and Yahoo!’s standard search much less frequently.

So while Search Assistant might be getting all of the attention and glory these days, Yahoo! has more than one suggestion feature worth writing home about. Give it a try and let me know what you think. I’d love to know if I’m the only one that loves AlltheWeb Livesearch!