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

yahoo! Next

[anandpur]

Inside look at Yahoo! next
http://next.yahoo.com/ this one is cool http://farechase.yahoo.com/ try this http://movies.yahoo.com/recommendations/

Re:yahoo! Next

[IAmTheDave]

Yahoo is definately taking Google's approach to opening betas to the general population. I think it helps drive adoption by making users feel they're getting the inside scoop.

Nonetheless, cool stuff.

Re:yahoo! Next

[Council]

Instead of 'rating' they should offer you two movies and ask 'which do you prefer'. This is a much better way to do it -- you'll notice that all the movies average out to a 'B' rating. It's extremely difficult, for me at least, to rate movies on a simple absolute scale. I tried the Yahoo one, but then realized that I was just rating the vast majority of movies "decently good". Yet I can almost always tell you which of two movies I prefer.

Nice idea

[yotto]

I like this idea, assuming it will work. I hate it when I'm looking for drivers for something and all I can find are webites trying to sell me the item. But, I think those websties are putting keywords in there so my search will find them, what's to stop them from doing that so Yahoo's slider bar finds them when I slide it all the way to 'informational'?

Re:Nice idea

[superpulpsicle]

So yahoo.com is packed with garbage ads. Then this http://mindset.research.yahoo.com/ comes out looking mighty close to google.

Another slider idea: Date vs. Page Rank

[ZP-Blight]

Sometimes when I'm searching for some new event that "just happened now" and may not be a world worthy event to get onto the news pages, I would like it if search engines would have a slider to let me choose the importance of the date in the search.

Nuclear Weapons

[DarthVeda]

Fantastic! Now I can either slide the bar one way, and learn how to build my own atomic stockpile, or slide it the other way and simply buy one outright.

Great idea, poor execution

[xbsd]

The idea is awesome and it's quite easy to understand, but the devil is in the execution. I know it's still in beta, but if you try, for example, "Linux" and choose 100% researching, it comes up with:

(56) Cooperative Linux. Open this result in new window Main site. Publications. Development. Search. All the web. Only www.colinux.org. References. What is coLinux. If Linux runs on every architecture, why should another operating system be in its way? " ... Cooperative Linux is the first working free and open source method for optimally running Linux on Microsoft Windows natively ... colinux.org

(16) Linux BoxOpen this result in new window ... DebianDesktopDevelopmentDistributionFuture of LinuxGamingGeneral newsGentooGovernmentHardwareInterviewKernelLinux vs WindowsLinux.Box NewsletterMan of ... linux.box.sk

(25) Home - The Community's Center for SecurityOpen this result in new window ... If you want to set up a Linux-based firewall, there's no need to run a bloated distribution ... toward systematically auditing Windows and Linux device-driver code for flaws, security ... linuxsecurity.com

Which are not exactly what I would call useful research sites. Wikipedia comes in #4.

Blend?

[Tharkban]

What's the point of blending the two techniques?

Anyone have a clue?

I would use one or the other but I can't think of any situation where I would prefer blending to doing two different searches.

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.

It actually works

[sapped]

I tried it by plugging "Toyota" in there.

With the setting bar on the research side you get opinions and reviews. With the settings on the shopping side you are directed to the manufacturers site along with their sales channels.

I am impressed and think that Google has been outdone for the first time in a while.

This could become very useful as the web is steadily getting more and more clogged with idiots wanting to sell you stuff all the time but not wanting to give you useful information on it.

Re:It actually works

[sapped]

Yeah it seems useable. But Google outdone? Day after day on slashdot theres posts on things such as Gmail, google maps, student open source sponsership, AJAX, et al... and from yahoo we get... a slider.

There are also very regular posts about how the top ranked results in Google are pointing to other search engines, junk sites, etc. They have been very sluggish in fixing those complaints. This "slider" directly addresses those complaints.

However, I don't think it will take Google very long to respond to this now that Yahoo's solution is out there.

Re:It actually works

[fanblade]

I agree that it's a great idea to filter out types of results, but I think the slider bar is just a gimmick. It is both too simple and too complicated at the same time:

A slider is too simple because it implies there are only 2 goals of searching. I beg to differ. The internet is not cleanly divided into 2 ends of a spectrum. (What about entertainment?)

A slider is too complicated because it forces you to balance exactly how much of each category you are looking for. Who really needs that? I'm going to want the slider all the way left, all the way right, or just search for everything. That means checkboxes. Good old fashioned boolean logic. Check the research box, check the entertainment box, uncheck shopping. Search. Bingo.

Re:Does anyone know of (a) search engines that

[sik0fewl]

Oops.. now with formatting:

1. Google allows the use of '*' as a wildcard
2. Google can let you search in certain languages (see the Advanced Search)
3. Google has the option to do this if you go to the localized version. eg, for Germany you would go to www.google.de. From there you can choose to search "Seiten aus Deutschland"