Yahoo Offers Personalized Search – My Yahoo Search
Google has been testing its lab version of personalied search. Eurekester and AskJeeves have brought personalized search out into the open by getting the jump on the other large search engines. And now Yahoo is in the game with the release of My Yahoo! Search Beta. On the Yahoo Search blog, Yahoo discussed the transition between static and personalized search.
The shift from analog to digital technology is reshaping much of the world around us, perhaps most noticeably in the realm of media. It seems like some of the most profound and transformative product introductions over the last few years are technologies that empower users to consume media how and when they want to, e.g., Tivo (tv), Netflix (home video), ipod (music) and of course blogs (news and information). In the world of search, this means that you should be able to define your own search experience. Today, the Web is a read-only source of information for most users; our vision is of a very individual Web — a “My Web”, if you will — which each user creates by searching, browsing, navigating, and generally doing the things they always do. My Yahoo! Search is our first step in that direction.
But getting back to the here and now… vision aside, our user research has shown that My Yahoo! Search addresses a whole host of everyday search problems. If you’ve ever experienced the tedium of searching again for something you found before but can’t quite remember, if you’ve ever been annoyed by search results you don’t like but show up again and again, if you ever wanted to share something you found in search but were forced to cut-and-paste… give My Yahoo! Search a shot.
My Yahoo Search features the ability to Save, Block, Share, and Find personalized search results.
Save – CYou can cick on the “Save” link next to any search result to save it in your My Yahoo Search memory. The My Web feature page keeps all your saved results, so you can access them easily whenever you want. Yahoo’s “Search My Web” helps you can find anything you’ve saved even faster.
Block – Find a site that you don’t want in your search results? Just click “Block site” and anytime you do a search, that site will be hidden. If you want to unblock a site, look for the Blocked Site icon at the bottom of your search results page. Click “Show”, then click “Unblock Site”.
Share – Sharing what you’ve saved is simple — just go to your My Web page, select one or more saved pages, and click the “Share” button. You can also share directly from your search results – just click the “Share” link next to any search result.
Find – Once you’ve saved something to My Web, you can easily it at any time by using the Search My Web button. You can also view your saved pages on the My Web page. Your saved pages can be sorted by date, search keywords, or URL, so it’s easy to find them again.
