Yahoo Alpha , Custom personalized search from yahoo

[benevolent001]

New search service from yahoo , similar to Google

Major difference is it shows results from various services of Google and is pretty neat page

Yesterday, the Yahoo!7 Search team began testing a beta service called Alpha that was born out of pizza and furious coding.

Whilst aggregating feeds on one page is nothing new, we wanted to take a federated search concept one step further. With this beta, we have introduced personalisation elements that not only allow users to customise their view, but also to add their favourite search service (at least those who syndicate their search results via OpenSearch RSS).

We also decided to add a sharing element for logged in users of the site. Now, if you decide to share your personalised url with others, they can view and effectively use the search configuration you have developed.

[au.alpha.yahoo.com...]

[edited by: engine at 5:36 pm (utc) on April 5, 2007]
[edit reason] added quote [/edit]

[sitetruth]

It's really spammable, too. Try searching for "london hotels". All the usual suspects are near the top. Not one result in the top 10 is an actual hotel.

[weeks]

Well, nifty design but the results are lame on the city/state searches I tried.

[keeper]

Looks like you can have any of the results on the right hand side set as default in the left hand main panel. The "Customise this page" link allows you to drag and drop the modules too.

As for relevance - they are using the Yahoo! index for web search results, flickr for images, youtube for video, Answers and wikipedia as well..

[QuantumEntanglement]

I liked the haiku I got when no results were found.

The web is so large
Almost boundless in its scope
Emphasis: "Almost"

[OrlandoTodd]

I think it's about time Yahoo starts playing up their "hand reviewed" directory. Yes, marketers will start submitting more sites, but hey aren't they in the business to make money? It doesn't have to completely dominate the results, but a little bump would be nice.

I found it interesting they played up Wiki so much. And they made the Sponsored area something the visitor has to select to view. A complete 180 from their main site in terms of paid real estate. I guess that will change if this ever gets pushed to the masses.