Yahoo! is experimenting on the old AlltheWeb site.

The old Norwegian AlltheWeb search engine is no more, the technology having been integrated into the Yahoo! Search Engine. The site lives on, however, and Yahoo! is using it for various experiments, features that might finally find their way to the Yahoo.com site.

The latest experiment is Livesearch. As soon as you start writing a search query, AlltheWeb will start guessing your intentions, generating a list of alternative keyword combinations for you to pick.

For instance: Before we have written “searc…”, up pops a list containing “google search engine” (that’s kind of interesting!), “people search”, “search engines”, “free people search” and so on.

It certainly works, although we are not sure we find it too useful. Maybe it will grow on us. We suppose it could be productive when you are stuck in your search, and need to look for alternative ways of asking your question.

This also makes it a useful tool for search engine optimization experts looking for alternative and popular search phrases, as the list is generated by an algorithm where popularity clearly is an important factor.

The Yahoo! Search Blog adds that Livesearch also shows “related queries, spelling suggestions, and enables you to use keyboard shortcuts to help you find the right query faster to get to the results that you want.”

It is clearly based on the same technology as Yahoo! Instant Search. However, we like the AlltheWeb version much better. Yahoo! Instant Search will bring up new text bubbles every time you add another letter, each bubble with a single web page search result.

Yahoo! is asking for feedback and has also established an online discussion on the topic. One of the latest threads are called “Where are the adult results?” Well, you can’t please them all!

See also our take on Yahoo! Instant Search: “Why feel lucky when you can be right?� — on Yahoo! Instant Search