In the first part of our interview, Yahoo's Director of IT, Product Management and Search, Ken Norton, alluded to Yahoo's upcoming personalized search. Despite skepticism and uncertainty over this new area, Ken and his co-worker Grace Chen, Yahoo's Product Manager, seem very confident in Yahoo's ability to succeed in personalization.

"In general I think people are skeptical and they should be," Ken admitted. In the search industry, he said, things have been done in the past that didn't improve the quality of search so people have the right to question new technology. However, he said, "if you were to ask a focus group about the Palm Pilot in 1995, everybody [would have said], 'Nah! PDA, I don't want it! It's too big. I'm not interested.' And all of a sudden, this [has become] a product that makes everybody go, 'Wow, this has changed my life!'"

Yahoo! takes its critics "with a grain of salt" because, Ken says, some of these people are just "afraid of change." However, he also realizes that it's hard for people to understand what can be done with personalization "because nobody's done it right."

He also says people should take into account that personalization involves customization. Users could tell search engines to exclude certain sources from search results. “Consumers respond much more positively to that because there’s immediate payoff,” he said. “I would certainly encourage people to think about personalization as a pretty broad topic, not just as some sort of creepy re-ranking of results.”

Ken says Yahoo! already has found success in personalization through MyYahoo, which has become popular. Despite this success, however, Ken said, “We at Yahoo! need to be careful when we evaluate personalization.” Yahoo! will be looking at how personalization improves search quality, comprehensiveness, and professionalism. Yahoo! will keep the existing core metrics of search in mind during these evaluations.

Grace, who works with Yahoo’s Local Search and Yellow Pages, is very familiar with personalization. I asked her how Yahoo! plans on competing with Verizon’s Super Pages, which has been a topic of discussion at this conference.

“SuperPages.com has basically added some enhanced content to their Yellow Pages database, similar to what we’ve done, but I don’t think they have extended it as broadly as we have,” Grace replied. “It still feels like an IYP experience.” In addition to bringing in content from multiple search engines, Yahoo! also aggregates websites and incorporates that content in the listings. “We use a structured data backbone and we’re combining that with the unstructured content to bridge that gap and bring it all together in one place.”

Ken agreed, saying that the great thing about the search industry is all the metadata out there. Yellow Pages information has been historically “very, very, very limited,” he said, but the Yahoo! Team has now gone beyond the Yellow Pages data.

Grace also pointed out that websites are not required to participate in Overture’s Local Match, which brings together searches with local businesses. Anyone with a local business can buy Local Match and bid on keywords. When asked whether the blurbs Overture will create for businesses without websites will be incorporated into Local Search results, Grace responded, “This is something we’re exploring. … We’ll consider incorporating it into other things…”

In an effort to create awareness about Yahoo! Search, Yahoo! has added search bars to all areas of its site. The company has also launched a new branding strategy, involving lots of purple, dubbing Yahoo! Search “the engine of possibility.” But it’s going to take a lot more than that for Yahoo! to successfully compete with Google.

Ken offered some insight into Yahoo’s strategy for getting Google users to make the switch. “It all comes down to brand loyalty,” he said, “and there’s not a lot of brand loyalty when it comes to search. … When users engage in our search, we want to be the highest quality search engine on the web. We want to delight them and win them over.”

Another point is that many searchers use more than one engine. “When they do that search on Yahoo,” Ken said, “we want to make it so good they don’t need backup.” Yahoo! will be exploring ways to improve the search experience, building on the company’s network foundation.

Over the next few years, Ken predicts we’ll see “a solidification of the top players.” Additionally, in what he calls the third phase of search, he believes there’ll be clear differentiation between the resources offered by these companies. During this phase, the search experience will improve. Search engines will find new ways to improve the user relationship and understand user intent, therefore making searchers feel like they are recognized as people and not just another anonymous entity.

Of course that's not all Yahoo! has in mind. I'll be posting part 3 of this interview, and telling you what Yahoo! thinks of Microsoft, soon.

See what Yahoo! revealed in the first part of our interview here.

What is an IYP experience?

Oops, sorry!

I believe IYP = Internet Yellow Pages (correct me if I'm wrong)

IYP = Internet Yellow Pages

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Jerry Russell
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In another forum I was wondering what does a search engine have to do to really compete with Google?

Then this thread basically asks the same question.

In the interview Yahoo is trying to answer this question and states:I´m wondering,.. Brand loyalty,... brand awareness. What is Yahoo known for? Email, Games, Shopping,... Search.

Not just search,.. but lots of other things as well. It's like the generalist (Yahoo) trying to compete with the specialist (Google). Though that doesn't mean Yahoo has no chance, but search will always be something they do on the side. That at least is what it feels like to me and, I assume, to most people.

Yahoo will always be a major player on the internet, but they are the "Wallmart" of the Internet, not really the search specialist.

But it will be interesting to see what they will come up with. In any way it will be a new push forward in search technology.


PS. Brittany, Did you receive my email with my picture I would like to have placed next to my posts?

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I think we need to undersatnd that most of what was said is interpretable, or at least speculative. No company, in a public conference room, is going to tell you exactly what they are doing or how. They'll tell you the expected results, in a round about way but never divulge the plan or process. So, we get the snips out and cut away at the branchess. Snip. Snip.

They're talkng about giving the user a better choice. The only current model that fills this criteria is RSS (Really Simple Syndication). Ah, I know there are members who mantain RSS is unoteworthy, but I have at least tried it - and succesfully. It's not just for news. A web visitor likes to be allowed, when they sign on, to find out immediately that software is released, an album or new ebook ready for download. They are comfortable with that web site and now 'collect' it to their desktop.

Let's look at some facts - Yahoo intoduces RSS beta a few months ago and says very quietly -gee guys- here is RSS, but shucks we not sure it's going to work and probably won't use it but can you try it out? Hello! The bells are ringing. The 'experts' are saying no impact, but webmasters start to realise their rankings go up considerably if they send feeds to Yahoo? They're building what they say - complete personalisation and control over your online choices.

And Safari. Not widely used but it is the best browser I have tried on any system. It has some in built feature that doubles a page loading speed regardless of connection. And what is Safari's biggest announcement to the Mac community last month - a brand new RSS feature that will allow complete personalisation of the web browser.

There's more on RSS changes, but when one cuts away all the BS from the speech, I would swear they are describing a greatly enhanceed version of RSS.

As such I believe them when they claim to threaten Google. If RSS is successful, and I believe it will be, Google will be behind the 8 ball for the first time.

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Peter,

Here is what I find interesting in your Walmart analogy;
If this is the generalist taking on the specialist, then based on the Walmart example, it is actually a smart move. Walmart is HUGE because people like one stop shopping. While it may not usually offer the highest in possible quality, people still flock to it because it is convenient. If I don't have to go to 5 different sources to get 5 different things, but can get at least a close facsimile of those things from one source and save time and money, that is going to hold some amount of appeal to EVERYONE. May not be a bad move on Yahoo!'s part at all.

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Lets face it all search engines are somewhat crude by technological standards but everyone says Google yahoo just as once they may have yelled Atari, Tandy Commodore but witch one will end up the IBM the Microsoft. Will it be yahoo, Google, msn? If anyone truly knew this than we would all be rich. But one thing is for sure we will see massive changes over the next few coming years with giga space as a standard feature, online software and who knows what else. Right now it is anyone’s game no one dominated the market Google has the largest market share but collectively all the others have a larger one this is not a locked market. We will have frustration as professionals keeping up with the never ending changes but will get relief as users as the internet is recognized for the valuable asset it is and more money is invested.

Purple branding may appeal to anyone with a thing for purple. But for anyone with a thing for search, there is Google.

Many of us have seen a television commercial for Yahoo, but not for Google. In advertising, Yahoo is using all their big guns while Google hasn't even started -- and hasn't needed to.

In order for Yahoo to compete with Google, they will have to do more searching of their own. The logical place to start is not by looking at what Google isn't doing, but what it is doing -- its winning attributes. A simple white page with a lone search box. Results pages are quick and easy to view. Ads are in text, and clearly separated. No frills, horoscopes, or blinking banners.

Sometimes change is good, while other times it's not. Search is about what it needs to be for the moment -- that is, with an efficient algorithm (ie, Google). What does need to change is for more people -- children and adults -- to be educated in how to search, not to mention how to use computers in general. That's another story. Back to the point, many people have tried to build a better mousetrap for technology's sake. Yet the same design has not changed much, even though people say it "could be better". When a good idea comes along, it's usually when people see the need for it. I have doubts this will be the case with "personalized search". Maybe a fad for a while. Personalized search = pet rock. Toolbar gimmick at best.

I'm being nice. The truth is, the idea makes me gag.


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Huh? Say again. How in the heck does having your RSS feed get your rankings to go up. "Fact" is that it doesn't, I know, I have been using it since it's inception. Wrote about it even.

I have had the feed (three of them actually) and it has done nothing for my rankings. It will not even spur that slug of a spider (Slurp) to even crawl those pages. Slurp is running at about one page to every eight that Googlebot is gobbling up.


Considering that Dave Winer has really painted RSS into a corner and froze the spec on it. Considering that Winer is the number one obstacle for RSS's future, and he will not budge or even consider listening to anyone else when it comes to RSS. Considering that the Atom community is thriving at a grass-roots level and advancing their spec into something more evolutionary and even more enhanced than RSS will ever be. Considering that Google chose Atom over RSS for Blogger (albeit, they backpedalled and will now "re"-include RSS support as it was in the beginning during the Pyra days). Considering that there is always something up Google's sleeve and it was not that long ago that Googlebot was taking random stabs looking for all commonly known RSS filenames as well as RDF filenames ... I think you may be taking Google a little too much for granted on this. They are never behind the eight-ball ... they are the Cue Ball that every one wants to take their pool cue to.

Also, when it comes to Yahoo's RSS Directory, outside of a funky search you can do for feeds in MyYahoo or a cheesy search at best in the Yahoo Index -- you really cannot locate RSS feeds too easily. But Google is not much better (granted), although they do have RSS feeds (actually XML feeds to be technical, which includes feeds of any type) in their Directory, just like they have in DMOZ.

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