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Yahoo is also working on a new generation of task-centric search that will not be keyword based, but will analyze free text descriptions from users, to give them more relevant results than they are currently getting from search engines, Raghavan said. "We have to get much smarter to understand and define the user's intent and deliver to that intent," he added.
[hindustantimes.com...]
At Yahoo Research, there are many components to working towards this "human facing Internet". To begin with, the company has realised that traditional "relational databases" that ferret information stored systematically in computers stood good for payroll processing and other corporate work. But for people to communicate with each other, a community system is required. This requires new kinds of complex software."We are working on a new middleware on top of the Net platform that is good for friendship and social communication," Raghavan said.
"We have to get much smarter to understand and define the user's intent and deliver to that intent"
Bull's eye on their having to get smarter bit,
profiling and privacy comes to mind, but this has been the advertiser's Holy Grail.
who likes what
what is hot
what should be trusted
If you search on Ford, what ads should you display? It is especially tricky with the news.
I did a bit of research on this with regards to SEM campaigns and it is not only fairly easy to implement but is also very effective from an ROAS point of view :-)
JAG
Are you saying it would be more appropriate to give "Gerald Ford" results for "Ford" purely because his death is in the news?
If people want a news-related search they can use Yahoo News or Google News, there's no need to make the main non-news search engines swing about from one topic to another just because it's in the headlines.
Most of the world outside America doesn't actually care or even know who Gerald Ford was, and non-US users would be mystified to see pages about a politician appearing when all they're looking for is information about cars. That's not meant as any slight on the former President, just an observation that most internet users are outside the United States yet use US search engines.
If people want a news-related search they can use Yahoo News or Google News
They could but they don't. Ford might not be the best example but the jump in recent news topic related searches in the main SERP is remarkable for a certain period of time not to mention profitable if you're an advertiser who is paying attention.
JAG
Wouldn't it make more sense though to educate the public to do so, perhaps by prompting them with a "did you mean to search for current events" link or something?
Showing news results on non-news search engines is like showing CNN on the Disney Channel during major news events because some people don't know how to change channels on their TV.
I'm glad they are thinking forward, but they still need to address the index.
Just my 2cents.
Wouldn't it make more sense though to educate the public to do so, perhaps by prompting them with a "did you mean to search for current events" link or something?
Maybe but that is a hard task when people use the engines in so many ways and all the engine really knows is that someone typed in a fragment of their thought. But, there is without a doubt, a direct relationship between an increase in traffic and a current event.
I did a project a few years ago to test the impact a current event has on bidding, positioning and ROAS. The results were amazing so I'm not fighting it but rather enjoying it. Now that may be true it was for PPC but the SERP would feel the same effect I'm sure.
JAG
