Slashdot Mirror
Yahoo's Y!Q Contextual Search Beta
skeptic1 writes "Just days after Microsoft unvieled its new MSN search, Yahoo released a new search tool called Y!Q that allows users to search within the context of the web pages they are currently viewing. It's not the typical textbox input search, and you don't even have to leave the current page you're on to use it. The current release is only the beta version."
Cant you already use google, specify the website or domain, and input your search request? Also, could anyone explain when this would be useful? Why not just go to the site, and search there?
Yes, Yahoo does support firefox.
But the idea isn't very original. The functionality belongs to Firefox and has been around for quite some time. The default search engine is Google on Firefox.
So yes, by default you get G!Q installed, Yahoo wants you to "upgrade" to Y!Q.
and you don't even have to leave the current page you're on to use it.
You also dont have to leave the current page to use firefox's search 'engine'
I've been using a tool called GuruNet (aka Atomica, and just recently Answers.com) for about 2 years. It's a subscription service, but worth every penny. You can alt-click on any word/phrase and it'll bring back categorized results from a dictionary, encyclopedia, Google, etc, and since they've linked in hundreds of validated sources you can have higher confidence that the information returned is accurate.
So will Yahoo! use this "service" to track what web pages you view and what you're interested in when you view them? A quick preview of their terms of service links to their privacy policy which states:
Yahoo! collects personal information when you register with Yahoo!, when you use Yahoo! products or services, when you visit Yahoo! pages or the pages of certain Yahoo! partners, and when you enter promotions or sweepstakes. Yahoo! may combine information about you that we have with information we obtain from business partners or other companies.
So Yahoo! will be tracking what you view and what you search for when you view it.
Downloader beware.
--
Join the Pyramid - Free Mini Mac | Free Flat Screens
infested with jello like fishes no melotron wishes
Highlight the text in a webpage, right click. You get "Search for " Sounds like the good folks at mozilla already have this feature. And the tags on the page described just seem like useless overhead.
Sometimes I wish computers were less friendly.
Googlebar. You can highlight words, right click, Googlebar items, Search for selected text.
I'm running the Googlebar extension version 0.9.0.30 if it makes a difference.
I didn't read the article, so I'm hoping that's the sort of thing you were referring to.
nevermind... it's built in...
"search web for..."
son of a...
this guy searches site frequently for Tex Ritter, Cool Whip and Kazoos, I guess we could sell that to goatse.cx guy...
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
If you RTFA you have seen they give many different ways to integrate into firefox. http://yq.search.yahoo.com/splash/firefox.html
...try and verbalize "Y!Q"
or maybe I'll just skip that party.
Yes, it already exists.. It existed the moment you installed Firefox. Just highlight the word, right click, and go to "Search Web for 'highlighted content'" It's right above that, if installed, dictionary extension you were talking about.
Do you see how my mind works? It's like a laser!
No wonder they lost the search engine wars. They check into odd things like thus, but even now their search results still do not have caching. That's the one thing that keeps me going back to Google again and again. Wish they would fix the deficiencies first.
Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
That's exactly my thought, and I did read the article. I won't complain, though... as more people learn of these features, the demand for 'em goes up and we get better stuff. :)
Why-bang-que?
I can see situations where this would be useful, but realistically this seems like just another feature that 90% of users wouldn't know about and the other 10% would almost never use. It hardly seems like something that's going to tip the scales towards Yahoo!
>
>or maybe I'll just skip that party.
You think you've got trouble. I was at this party, and the guy was telling me about Y!Q.
Fortunately, I was raised by a !Kung tribe, so I was able to understand it when this guy started talking about Y!Q.
Unfortunately, DNS (which was not invented by the !Kung), I couldn't even guess what the domain name for the Y!Q search engine was supposed to be.
So I thought I'd just google for it. Heh.
I really shoulda skipped that party.
If I remember correctly, my browser already has this feature built in, I think I can get to it with a simple CTRL + F Now, where can I get some real news?
In Firefox running on xfree or xorg, without extensions, you can highlight the word, middle-click in the google box, press Enter.
Also, highlight the word, Ctrl-C,K,V, Enter does it, even more efective.
Just kidding, but the real issue is that Firefox already has all the searching functionality I can use right now.
Isn't this the same as Same as Google's 'Similar Pages'?
It is a built in feature no need to add an extension.
CMD + f ...
is that hard?
I am the Alpha and the Omega-3
By contextual search, do they mean being able to dynamically (sp? too lazy to open another damned window) search a page that is active in your window/tab without the need to visit a seperate site to use a search engine? Or do they mean that you can use the search engine to select a specific page and search from within their site?
If it is the former of the two, I've got that covered with a nifty Firefox extension that doesn't crowd my view with a search box window, but rather places a the search box down on my menu bar. I believe that it is ConQuery, but can't be certain as I am at work and forced to use IE6 for all of my darpaintrawebnet needs.
If it's the latter, then what's the point?
"How like you to drag your keyboard to a gun fight." - Aaron Bedard (BANE)
In the past, most web developers have taken comfort in the fact that most of the popular browsers were Pretty Damn Similar. You can give the user a unified experience no matter what they were using.
The advent of taskbar thises and thats and Firefox plugins means you can never really be sure what the user is seeing. What's worse, the web developer probably doesn't even have a way to tell. If we're lucky, these programs will identify themselves through HTTP headers.
Even though we're mostly there with HTML standardization, any sort of high level usability standardization seems increasingly hard to come by.
"Yick"
"Why Bank?"
I didn't read the article, and will continue to use Ctrl-F to search within the context of my current web page. No Yahoo required.
Why, oh why, didn't I take the Blue Pill?
Why bang Q? He's omnipotent, that's why.
One man's Funny is another man's Offtopic.
It's a shame the poster didn't link to the info we posted on the Yahoo! Search blog last night. I think it answers some of the questions coming up here. Then again, this is Slashdot! :-)
Jeremy D. Zawodny /
I get the feeling that all the other posters pointing out that firefox already supports "highlight and search" don't get the point. I think the novelty here is that you can highlight huge sections of text, send it to Y!Q, and it will find other pages that are related, given that context.
After playing with it, I can see some how Y!Q is different - I went to a random article on Google news, highlighted an entire paragraph of text, and sent it to Y!Q. It returned a bunch of pages related to that original news article. When you do the same thing with Google search, not surprisingly, it only returns one page.
So, yes, Y!Q does something different. I don't know if it's entirely useful, but it's not entirely redundant, either.
Sounds like wiki to me.
Stick this on your Mozilla/Firefox toolbar (all on one line of course), highlight a word or words, and click it.
It also works if you click it without highlighting text. It will pop up a dialog where you can enter terms you want to search.
Simple!
Well, mod me down. there it is! It just was not coming up in the yahoo searches I did. Someone moded me "interesting" without checking.
Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
On the very page the parent linked, it has instructions on how to add Yahoo to this context menu.
- It's not the Macs I hate. It's Digg users. -
For all those folks comparing it to Firefox "Search web for selection", this is a very different beast. What Y!Q does is adding metadata to your query, so that only pages are listed which both
1) contain the terms you selected and
2) are related to the metadata of the original website.
I wonder what the results could be if this technology were merged with masive metadata with distributed generation.
Singularity: a belief in the "God" idea with the "demiurge" relation inverted.
...but I'm afraid of upsetting google. I don't want my ranking to drop!
1. Develop alternate interface to internet search engine.
2. Select outdated, annoying IT colloquialism to describe technical step #3.
3. ?
4. Profit!
and now back to the fallout shelter...
Everyone is focusing on the "right-click on selected text and search for it" part of this deal, but that is not where the innovation is supposed to be. If you highlight more than 10 words in google, it will drop the rest. This Y!Q thing lets you enter a bunch of text, and it uses that text to get a contextual idea of what you're searching for and find results. It is not looking for pages with all those search terms in the pages.
How does it do all this?
Magic.
Ironically, the word ironically is often used incorrectly.
This kind of functionality. I basically search when I don't have any sites with the information I'm looking for. If I already have a site with the information I'm looking for generally they have links to similar information on the site. I honestly can't think of a situation when I would want to use it. That's just me though. I'm sure there's a market out there for it, else Why would Yahoo be putting it out there? Right?
If you see spelling or grammatical errors don't blame me. I tried to preview but IE here at work borked the CSS
I don't know, but I would bang Q because he is omnipotent.
Why didn't they call it Ctlr!F
TruePunk | Games
Ahhhh, thanks. Aussie found what was confusing me. Now it makes sence. Mod aussie up please!
Actually, they are letting you know that signing up for a Yahoo! account makes it easier to match the information they already keep on you.
Oh, and that they buy information from third parties and in the future they will form a master database about you and your habits. But they don't say they will sell them and that they are basically doing the same thing most web sites do already.
I look at my logs daily, I like to know about the people who visit.
Get your Unix fortune now!
try and verbalize "Y!Q"
Why exclamation mark Q? It's a mouthful, but certainly nothing naughty....
After adding the "yq" bookmark/keyword search to Firefox I decided to give it a real challenge with the question: What is the best operating system? First entry: Linux Online :-)
How do you prounce it? Yah-Queue? Why-Queue? Yahoo! Query? Maybe Eee-Queue?
Why bang Q? He's omnipotent, that's why.
Omnipotent? I thought he died?
Wrong Q!!! Geek privileges denied. (ST:TNG reference)
One man's Funny is another man's Offtopic.
I notice the following patterns on the negative comments here on slashdot.
I recommend that all of the people spouting these types of comments check out all the flavors and implementations of Y!Q. To summarize, the first three of these four have not really been talked about in this forum (or just barely scratched). You're missing a glaring 75% of the features:
Additionally, from the Y!Q results page, you can "peel" superflouous search criteria to narrow down to what you are looking for.
I encourage everyone commenting on this release to actually read about and use it, so you can all know what you've been commenting about. I'm all in favor of poking holes in things, but at least know what you're poking.