Yahoo Working on a New Kind of Search

March 17, 2008

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Chris Brogan shared that Yahoo is considering a new approach to serving up search results. He describes it as The Sound of Content Ripping Free From Its Page. I’m not sure it will be as dramatic as all that for a couple reasons.

What’s at the heart of Chris’ concern is this short post over at Business Week about what they labeled Yahoo’s Linkless Search. Here’s the part Chris finds concerning

Yahoo’s goal is to build a vast universe of related information, so that we get the info we’re looking for, without having to click on links. Search engines are already moving toward this. More and more, the information pops up on the result pages. But what Raghavan is describing sounds very much like an effort to push relevant Web pages down, or even out of the equation. “We’re not giving you pages, we’re giving you information synthesized from other pages.”

I’ve emphasized the parts that I think probably give Chris pause.

Search Without Links

At first brush the concept sounds a little hair brained to me.

From a publisher perspective it sounds goofy because with this approach to search Yahoo is choosing what parts of my content their user really “needs” to see rather than showing them my site and letting them choose the relevant content in context with the entire page.

From a user stand point I generally prefer to have the option to click through to the raw data. The idea of a synopsis makes sense. But I’d still want to see a link where I can click through to the source material. However I wonder if the average internet user feels the same way.

From Yahoo’s perspective it might make sense. IF they are looking at search as a way to corral people onto their site rather than as a gateway to other sites. If Yahoo’s intent is to build cull-de-sacs where “all roads lead to Yahoo” then this is probably one way to accomplish that goal.

Solving a Non-existent Problem

Here’s the thing. It seems to me that Yahoo is attempting to solve a “problem” that doesn’t exist. Here is an example of the “problem” as Yahoo sees it:

In the current mode, when we’re looking for, say, a restaurant in Hoboken, we query, read a web page, query again for reviews, and then again for directions.

Sounds like a huge burden, right? Yahoo claims that if someone is looking to check out a restaurant then they have to do 3 separate searches to find the information they need to make an informed decision. Why not simplify that to 1 search?

The thing is you already can get all that info from one search. Let me demonstrate.

Take one of my favorite local restaurants, the New South Cafe right here in Savannah. When I enter in “New South Cafe, Savannah, GA” into Google I get links to the following info on the first page:

Restaurant Website
Directions
Several Reviews
Some Community Involvement Info about the Restaurant

And that’s with one search, not three. Looks like Google’s already accomplishing what Yahoo is “researching” and is still ushering people to the content creators’ web sites. Everybody wins.

And here’s something interesting. Search for the same thing in Yahoo, “New South Cafe, Savannah, GA” and you get similar info. I see the restaurant’s web site, directions, and reviews all on the front page.

Yahoo’s Faulty Info

The top Yahoo results point to pages of info that are still on Yahoo web sites, though. Interestingly one of the top results gives a bogus address for the restaurant. Notice the phone numbers for the two entries are the same.

But folks following their directions to that location wouldn’t find the restaurant because it isn’t there. You’d have to click through to the restaurant’s main web site anyway to find out which location is the correct one. Or I you could just go over to Google and double check your search I suppose. They seem to have the location right somehow. Of course they aren’t pushing users to another Google page.

If the current Yahoo web sites can’t contain a simple piece of info like the location of a restaurant that’s been the same for at least the 4 years I’ve been in town, how do they expect to amass relevant data on their sites for the millions of searches that internet users conduct every day?

Bottom Line

I don’t think folks should get unduly worried about Yahoo! turning the search engine world on its ear with this new approach to search. It seems more likely to me that Yahoo will be collating masses numbers of pages with dubious content value this way.

If this is really what they are counting on to break the strangle-hold Google has on the search market and fend off a hostile take over from Microsoft then they are probably in worse shape than most folks give them credit for.

Popularity: 5% [?]

Tags: Tech Tips, Business Week, Chris Brogan, Yahoo

Written by Chris · Filed Under Tech Tips

Advice to Yahoo Employees - Start Looking Now

February 23, 2008

It’s not big news that Yahoo is facing some significant challenges. Even if everything was roses for the search engine company the very fact that another company like Microsoft is looking to buy them out is going to make for some tough going for the good folks who work for Yahoo.

Been There, Done That

Event though I use Google products and services way more than those of Yahoo, I feel for the good people at Yahoo. I’ve been down that “the company I’m working for is being bought out road” my self. It isn’t very much fun. I was in the maritime industry, not the tech field at the time.

9-11 hit the transportation sector pretty hard. The company I was working for was on a shaky financial footing anyway and the couple lean years after that day was simply too much to for the company to endure.

Rough times have a very Darwinistic way of weeding out inefficient companies. Read more

Popularity: 4% [?]

Tags: Business, MicroHoo, Microsoft, Yahoo

Written by Chris · Filed Under Business

Promote Your Business Blog with Social Networking Sites: MyBlogLog

April 20, 2007

We are going through some of the social networking sites that are out there and talking about how we can become active in them to help promote our businesses.

Yesterday we talked about StumbleUpon. In the comments of that post Tony Clark pointed out an article on DoshDosh that gives a very comprehensive introduction to StumbleUpon that is worth reading though. Head over to yesterday’s post and check out the link. Thanks Tony!

MyBlogLog History

Today let’s take a look at MyBlogLog.

MyBlogLog started out as a statics program specifically for blogs. I opened an account with them at the beginning of last summer because they were one of the few (free) programs that tracked where people clicked leaving your blog.

There are lots of metrics packages that tell you how people come into your blog. But at the time I was curious about the other side of the equation and MyBlogLog fit the bill nicely. They still do that well. Read more

Popularity: 8% [?]

Tags: Blogging, Tech Tips, Business Blogging, MyBlogLog, SOBCon, SOBEvent.com, Social Networking, StumbleUpon, TheGoodBlogs, Yahoo

Written by Chris · Filed Under Blogging, Tech Tips

Promote Your Business Blog with Social Networking Sites

April 18, 2007

Steve Bowman over at Coastal Uruguay asked me a great question yesterday about increasing blog traffic.

He said he’d been actively building relationships with other bloggers in his niche and seeing some good results from that approach. But now he is ready to step up the pace a bit.

What is a good next step?

My first suggestion was for him to start getting actively involved with some of the social networking sites out there.

The general idea behind social networking sites is that they make it easier for folks to find quality stuff on the web. The different sites go about it in different ways and use different criteria for their own definition of quality. But that gives you the gist of what most of them are trying to accomplish.

Social networking sites can be a great source of traffic for your business blog because so many people congregate at those sites. For example, people have been known to overload their servers by making the front page of Digg or Slashdot because of all the traffic that heads their way.

The way I see it that is a very good problem to have.

Probably the biggest trick is finding a social networking site that is at least somewhat oriented towards your niche. For example very little of what I write here would be at all applicable for Slashdot because that site is all tech all the time. SuccessCREEations isn’t a tech blog.

Over the next few days I’ll take a look at some of these sites in more detail. I’ll describe the pros and cons of the sites and explore some reasons why they might work for promoting your business blog.

Here are some sites that we’ll explore:

If there are any others that you’d like to explore, let me know and I’ll look at them more closely in this series.

In the mean time here are a couple of great resources to help get your creative juices flowing when it comes to promoting your business blog.

52 of the Best Ways to Promote Your Blog and Your Business by Mark White of Better Business Blogging.

23 Ideas for Finding New Readers for Your Blog by Darren Rowse of ProBlogger.net.

Enjoy!

Popularity: 15% [?]