Yahoo! Releases New Search Tool

rcrc writes "Yahoo! Research Labs has recently released a new search tool that gives the opportunity to the user to choose whether they are looking for informational sites, or shopping sites, based upon a slider bar. This tool is currently in beta and more information can be found in the FAQ." From the article: "With the slider in the middle position, only the default Yahoo! Search sort is used. When the slider is at either end, only the secondary commercial/non-commercial sort is used. But when the slider is anywhere in between, Yahoo! Mindset presents a blend of the two sorting systems."

Comments

Fancy sorting my TLDs?

[GillBates0]

Wonder what made Yahoo decide on choosing these two terms as ends of the spectrum. IMHO, it excludes a variety of other intents that people use search engines for.

It also looks like their engine gives a higher weightage to .com sites when the slider is towards "Shopping", and to .org, .edu, .gov sites when it is towards "Researching". For most purposes, I would go with the slider at the extreme end towards "Researching", so I can exclude spam/advertisement sites. But sadly, it looks like that would skip over *many* useful sites which end in .com .

For example, http://howstuffworks.com/ seems to be categorized as a "Shopping" site, presumably due to it's suffix, and doesn't turn up with the slider at the "Researching" end.

Needs more work, IMHO.