Yahoo Enlists Millions of Web Surfers to Quality Control their Search?

MyWeb Hits the SERPS

[sugarrae]

Was doing some searching on Yahoo this morning and noticed myweb has been added to the serps - each website in the serps has a "save" and "block" next to it for people to log in and start using MyWeb. Wonder if they'll be using this information to determine quality within the serps, etc as well.

[nuevojefe]

I just caught that as well. More personalization...

[bakedjake]

Why you should care:

1. Hugely visible, accessible, and easy to use barometer of search quality.

2. Yahoo's personalization features are second only to Amazon on the web. Imagine future buttons like "do not list sites from this or related publishers".

3. Y!Q, Y!Q, Y!Q... massive potential for cross-functionality.

4. More and more people I know are using search results as bookmarks. A "save" function a la Furl is very cool, and I even know some Yahoos who use Furl personally. Maybe they're taking a page from that book?

Yahoo seems hell bent on lots of innovation lately in the search space. Good job guys.

[zeus]

I think I saw it yesterday, Im not sure how popular it will be, but lets see.

[andy_boyd]

Seeing it here too ... it'll be interesting to see how this pans out.

Now if only Yahoo could show a little endeavour with their bot!

[bhartzer]

Why you should care

Right-on again with your observations, Jake. I totally agree.

Personally will be watching Y!Q more in the future.

[sem4u]

Looks interesting. Something to keep my eye on :)

[sugarrae]

Saw something else interesting today - when doing some searches, I would get images, ala google, popping up at the top of the results. Seems someone pushed a new feature button this week LOL.

[Qur1uS]

Yahoo is leveraging surfers habits/preferences to weedout bad sites? If not now, you better believe they will in the future...The web is broke, so they are starting to fix it...

[mikeD]

Yahoo is leveraging surfers habits/preferences to weedout bad sites?

Surely this will be up for some serious abuse.

[andy_boyd]

"Surely this will be up for some serious abuse."

I agree as it is likely that sites that are saved more are ranked higher ... it won't be long until someone finds a way to spam it. Maybe through a 'service' whereby hundreds of people save any given site to their web?

[monkeythumpa]

"Surely this will be up for some serious abuse."

It may be abused, but this model has been very successful for Craigslist.org. With some carefully thought out protections it should be fairly metered, while putting control of search results back in the hands of surfers, not spammers.

I wonder though how widely it will be used. How many people are going to visit a site and then hit back and "flag" that result? I would just move on to the next one. But I haven't been trained yet.

[httpwebwitch]

rae: lol
seems like the images show up when you have "image", "images", "photo", "drawing" or "picture" in your query. It does not respond to "gif" or "jpg".
It gives you the first few images that show up in their image search.

I like the neWebmasterWorldeb features. And I also appreciate how Yahoo is keeping up with good uncluttered design, despite cramming more and more stuff onto the page.

[httpwebwitch]

oops - tripped the em doubleyou em filter again:
"neWebmasterWorldeb"

[sugarrae]

Add "logo" to the list as well for photo results ;)

[Dc71]

As well you might be interested in using mindset.research as well filtering your quality for more results from educational content or commercial very interesting I seem to do better with a high educational value imagine that with bad spelling and all!

[Watcher of the Skies]

ok....there...finished....just blocked all the other 96 sites in the top 100 'cept for mine....on to another IP.....;-)

[referer]

It's also possible to block websites in Google. With the CustomizeGoogle extension (for Firefox).

[ikkyu]

ok....there...finished....just blocked all the other 96 sites in the top 100 'cept for mine....on to another IP.....;-)

After I read this I thought about it too, but then won't you pay the price later on on not seeing the 'real' serps?

[otc_cmnn]

Just log out to see the real serps

[Dc71]

I think the hint their is yahoo might use this data somehow to decide whether a site should be their or not I think thats a myth as well just like the google smiley button on the toolbar

[antonaf]

I wonder though how widely it will be used. How many people are going to visit a site and then hit back and "flag" that result? I would just move on to the next one. But I haven't been trained yet.

I'm not sure how many people will bookmark a site in the SERPs, especially if they never visited the site...it will be interesting. But I'm certain many would use the toolbar to "Save to My Web". I know I do...but then again, I surf at least 10-12 hours a day, internet savvy, and use several different PC's throughout the day. Someone who surfs 1-2 hours a day and only use 1 computer...probably wouldn't find the need to go outside of their usual browser bookmarks. I think in years to come this may prove to be a very wise push for Yahoo! I only hope.

[jattfx]

antonaf makes a very good point here. It would be real cool if yahoo comes out with their own browser that has this feature or partnerships with another browser. The only advantage i see would that you'll be able to access your favorite sites from around the world 24 hours 7 days a week.

[HughMungus]

I'm not sure how many people will bookmark a site in the SERPs, especially if they never visited the site...it will be interesting. But I'm certain many would use the toolbar to "Save to My Web". I know I do...but then again, I surf at least 10-12 hours a day, internet savvy, and use several different PC's throughout the day. Someone who surfs 1-2 hours a day and only use 1 computer...probably wouldn't find the need to go outside of their usual browser bookmarks. I think in years to come this may prove to be a very wise push for Yahoo! I only hope.

Doesn't it work without the toolbar? I log into My Yahoo at home and at work so I'd imagine the bookmarks would be portable, no?

[SuddenlySara]

I'm sure the black hat competition is already spamming this to the max. Block them save me block them save me block them save me...

?

[HughMungus]

Well, one thing to remember in the paranoia in having your site blocked is that Yahoo does have editors who help build the search results... I'd bet this is to help them.

[mann]

Can you see Also Try: features,

I think it's there but I never used to look at yahoo deeply.