Yahoo! to the Max: An Extreme Searcher Guide

Yahoo! To The Max: An Extreme Searcher Guide is a outline of all of the resources and services offered by Yahoo! These varied services range from search engine and directory services through news and discussion groups to shopping and games. Many of these services are available to the general public however to make full use of all the Yahoo! resources and services, the author of this book encourages readers to join Yahoo! as a free member. Yahoo! To The Max: An Extreme Searcher Guide is mainly for those who haven't really explored Yahoo! or those that don't realize that Yahoo! is much more than a search engine. Nonetheless, even the Internet surfing expert will find a few services or reference resources that he or she never even knew existed. As the author says, the best way to learn about the services offered at Yahoo! and on the Internet in general is to click on the various links and fully explore the areas that interest you the most.

Well I hadn't used Yahoo for the last several years because I could do whatever I wanted on Google. So, I didn't really know what I was missing until I read through this book and tried the myriad of little tricks detailed throughout. Yahoo has grown up and is a serious competitor to other search engines as well as a preferred site for some purposes. Author Randolph Hock introduces the reader to the details of various services of Yahoo including Groups, News, Mail, Messenger, GeoCities, Chat, Message Boards, Shopping, Auctions, Classifieds, and Finance. If that isn't enough he includes information on how to use Yahoo's city guides, maps, weather, people search, and lots of other useful stuff. Have you ever been to a website that did not have a search function? I've been to a lot of them. The author details how to deal with these situations using Yahoo and including site:www.sitename.com on the search line. When you do this it just searches that site! Or if you want to find all the sites that link to another site you can use the link syntax in the search box. I did that and it returned eight links. Surprisingly I did the same thing on Google and it only returned four and only one of them was the same in both engines. A couple of more searches following the instructions in the book and I was surprised to find that in several instances Yahoo returned more relevant results than my old favorite Google. With lots of details on how to use Yahoo effectively, Yahoo to the Max is a highly recommended book which has convinced me that I can often get the results I am looking for more easily from Yahoo than from competitors.

In 1994 Yahoo was started by two Stanford University graduate students, David Filo and Jerry Yang. It was at the time when the Internet was just beginning to take off and there were an increasing number of web sites available to Internet buffs. These two enterprising students developed a collection of selected sites arranged in categories or a web directory that they made available to others. It soon became a very popular search engine, and in 1996 the company went public. In 2004 the focus had changed from a directory function to a portal and search function. Yahoo had also established its own "crawled" database, instead of relying on others. Furthermore, in August of the same year, Yahoo came out with a home page that no longer even prominently displayed the directory. I have to admit, that after reading Randolph Hock's Yahoo To The Max An Extreme Searcher Guide, I was quite surprised to learn all of the newest Yahoo features, and yes, it made me think twice about that other search engine whose name begins with G. The resulting book is an excellent manual exposing all of the nifty features of Yahoo presented in an informative and accessible style. According to the author, Yahoo is the best general portal on the Web, as it has the capability of integrating a broad variety of services and consolidates them nicely on a single page. Even Google has now recognized the usefulness of this approach, and as pointed out, they have been expanding into a wide range of other offerings (directory, news, images, shopping, local, etc) even to the extent of appearing to imitate Yahoo in several ways. Hock exhibits a sharp eye for the small but important details of Yahoo that will help you better appreciate its value as a portal and its content rich quality. This is quite in evidence as you read through the book's nine chapters, wherein the author has done an admirable job in explaining Yahoo's home page, effective search and browsing techniques, personalization of the site, groups, news, mail, buying and selling through Yahoo, financial page, and other miscellaneous tidbits as maps, travel, weather, health, photos, music, desktop search, etc. I was surprised to learn that not only can Yahoo aid you with searches on the Web, but can also provide you with an easy, fast, and effective search of the contents of your computer. Another feature that I have experimented with is the personalization of the portal pertaining to its appearance, contents, services, messages, and you can even add such features as calendar options, events and task listings, and many more. It should also be pointed out is that most of the chapters include figures that aid you in fitting the pieces together in order to comprehend its usefulness. As mentioned in the Preface, the book is not intended to be the definitive, "everything anyone might ever want to know about Yahoo!" book. Its purpose is to act as a guide to the serious "extreme" user in getting the most from Yahoo. One la