It all started when Yahoo! dumped Google earlier this year in favor of its own algorithmic results. I hadn't paid much attention to Yahoo! until then (because if it was in Google, it was in Yahoo!). Sure I knew some things about it. Like getting a directory listing was difficult, to say the least. But when it comes to the finer points about Yahoo!, I was in the dark.
But when they did the switch, I started to pay more attention, obviously. Not just because they account for about 1/3 of most sites total referral traffic, although that's what initially got me looking at them, but because they also had a lot of features that I'd heard about but never used.
At the time they also released a toolbar (in beta) with a measurement called Yahoo! Web Rank, which is similar to Google's toolbar with PageRank.
We also soon found out that in order to submit sites to their index, you needed to have a free Yahoo! account. So I signed up for my free Yahoo! account and even set up my own Yahoo! homepage with tons of cool content.
As you can see Yahoo! was slowly sucking me in. I now had the Yahoo! toolbar and a custom Yahoo! home page. I even set my Firefox browser to use my Yahoo! page as my home page.
I have found myself spending more time at the Yahoo! sites. Likely a lot of people have. But it wasn't until the other day that I realized I might be spending even more time at a Yahoo! site. That's because, on my home page there was a small link that said "Try Yahoo! personal search (beta)"
So I did, and I have to tell you, it has lots of really interesting features. The first thing I like about Yahoo!s personal search is that you can mark pages. You can mark them to save them, you can mark them to block them, or you can mark them to share them.
I started playing with saving pages, and I must say this is a great thing. I am now able (from both Firefox and Internet Explorer) to save pages that interest me. By simply clicking a link on my "Links" toolbar (you have to install the button first, but it is as easy as dragging and dropping it to your toolbar) I can easily save the pages that I want to review later.
You can imagine that in my line of work I view hundreds of pages per day, so trying to remember where I saw that "really cool thing" or that "really important piece of news" is difficult.
Sure I could review my browser history, but unless I remember part of the URL, title, and even the day I viewed it on, I'll never find it.
But with this new Yahoo! personal search, I can mark them and save them for later viewing (I can add notes to what I've saved as well). I can even go to my saved pages and categorize them into topics. Now if there's something that I really liked, and want to look at it again, I simply go to the mysearch page and find it.
And if I have hundreds of pages stored in dozens of categories - no problem: I simply search for them using the Yahoo search box.
Also, I can "bookmark" pages from within the Yahoo! search results. When I perform a search, I can easily mark pages from there. I don't actually have to visit the site to bookmark the page.
Blocking and Sharing work much the same way - when you perform a search you can block sites from showing up in the results (you can always unblock them as well)
When you share a site, you are sent to a window where you put in the users name and email address, and you can even send a few lines about the link. It is then emailed to the person you want to share it with.
When they get the email, it looks like a Yahoo! search results page, and there's even a Yahoo! search box in the email. It also tells the recipient how they can join Yahoo! personal search. The only real problem I have with sharing results is that the @yahoo.com email address got blacklisted by our spam filter, so the message was marked as spam.
So why am I devoting so much time to Yahoo! personal search when there are other products out there like this? It's simple. Yahoo! is the first major player to tie it all together.
From the user's point of view, they can have 1 (or many, it is up to them) custom home page. My home page has 50 elements! That's a lot more than most sites will let you have on their custom pages. And there seem to be a lot more news sources (which occupy about 30 of those spaces) than on other web portals.
Tie into that the ability to save pages that interest me, and have that content available to me anywhere on the web makes Yahoo! a much more compelling option than before.
Throw in the Yahoo toolbar (which is also web based, so if I'm on another computer with the Yahoo! toolbar installed, I get my Yahoo! buttons), and the large Yahoo! web mail inbox (larger than Hotmail) and their own IM product, and you can see how Yahoo! can beat others in its field.
This is why I'm spending more time on Yahoo! Not because I think it's cool, or the thing to do, but because when I'm on the web, I like to have fewer sources to go to. Yahoo! now gives me the ability to quit using a few of the other sites I commonly go to. The ability to now save pages means I don't have to bookmark, or use another 3rd party service. I can just add it to the new Mysearch product, and it will be available and searchable at any time.
Best of all is that it's free and easy to use. What could be better than having a single easy to use source for finding, categorizing and making web content available to me?
Rob Sullivan
Production Manager
Enquiro.comCopyright 2004 - Searchengineposition Inc.