The team at Yahoo Search has been involved with what is browser-based search assist for some time. For instance, they launched a feature literally titled Yahoo Search Assist in mid-2007.

And earlier this year the company acquired the exclusively Apple Safari-friendly plugin Inquisitor, which, in addition to scouring an engine like Yahoo for relevant material, suggests additional keywords, and grants easy access to sites like Flickr and Wikipedia. Today Yahoo says it has pushed Inquisitor past its once Safari-only existence to include options for Firefox and Internet Explorer users as well.

Yahoo and Inquisitor have made sure to maintain the visual traits of Inquisitor across the browsers now supported, which is just as well, given the fact that it always was a nice-looking bit of kit. But some enhancements beyond versions that have come before are in evidence and are certainly worth noting. This is particularly the case for those using IE 7 or 8. (Note: Inquisitor downloads now available for Firefox and IE are both in 1.0 beta stages.)

Yahoo claims that work done by its research department has enabled the company to enhance the search algorithm to present “more targeted results” to users. And in the space of IE, Inquisitor will quickly deliver items found within the bookmarks menu.

If you frequently create bookmarks, but don’t bother sorting them manually for fast perusal at a future time, this can certainly be helpful if you happen to condition yourself to trigger Inquisitor for regular Web searches. Of course, Firefox now allows users to tap the so-called “Awesome Bar” to easily access bookmarks hidden from plain view. And users can even search for items on specific sites through a special hot-key combination. But some users would likely find a more multifaceted search option with segmented results shown in aggregate more appealing.

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