Search has now officially entered its next phase, with Yahoo joining the rest of the search giants with a new take on the internet's oldest marketing game. The company debuted predictive search in the hope of clawing back market share that has gone to the likes of Google, MSN and Ask.

With only 15 percent of users getting what they want with a single search query, officials at Yahoo said they see ample room for improvement in search, despite the fact that comScore reports steady market share growth for Google over the past two years.

The idea behind Yahoo Search Assist is to deliver predictive results to more users, who average three to four queries before finding what they're looking for, according to a research conducted for Yahoo by Harris Interactive.

Search Assist adds suggested terms to users, helping people refine queries for unfamiliar topics in real time. To help build out some of that data, Yahoo has turned to information compiled by recent acquisitions such as Flickr and Del.icio.us, as well as Yahoo Answers.

"We hope the data in those websites will help make web search better," Vish Makhijani, general manager and senior vice president of Yahoo Search, told Reuters. 

Yahoo has also combined video, audio and photos alongside its traditional text result. In June, Ask.com became the first major search engine to offer a unified search. Google and MSN also have turned to a multimedia approach for search.

Yahoo has struggled to figure out its new direction since the return of founder Jerry Yang. However, a return to search viability would go a long way to righting Yahoo's ship.