Yahoo continues to develop a new home page, and today has shared a sneak-peek at the latest design that's being tested internally. The "My Favorites" column on the left side of the page seems to be where the big changes are happening. Yahoo currently lists more than a dozen of its own properties in this space, but the new home page will feature a dashboard of sorts that users can customize with many of their favorites sites -- including non-Yahoo sites like eBay or the Wall Street Journal. Users can also keep track of their friends social activities via a new Yahoo Updates app. And if [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Consumer | Yahoo: Search | Yahoo: User Interface

There are arguably two parallel tracks in the "what will succeed Google?" meme. An emerging one is "will the feds intervene to block Google?" The second is much older and involves the hypothetical "semantic web" or sometimes "deep web." Essentially this asks, "who will do search better than Google?" (A third line of argument might surround "social search.") Two pieces in two days in the NY Times reflect the two former strands. The first article is Everyone Loves Google, Until It’s Too Big and picks up on the monopoly discussion. I responded over the weekend on my personal blog Screenwerk. [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Social | Features: Analysis | Google: General | Google: Legal | Google: Other | Microsoft: Bing | Microsoft: Other Search | Search Engines: Powerset | Search Engines: Social Search Engines | Top News | Yahoo: Search | Yahoo: User Interface

The Yahoo corporate blog announced that phase one of the Yahoo home page test is about done now. Yahoo has taken in a lot of feedback since launching a limited test of the new home page back in September 2008 and has decided to try some new things. Yahoo has decided to add more third-party apps from eBay, Forbes.com, Wired.com and others. They have decided to "beef" up the Sports and Finance apps, by providing schedules, team standings, blogs links and more, plus one-click access to your stock portfolios and stock quotes. Plus, now you can customize the apps by adding and removing them, [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Consumer | Yahoo: User Interface

Yahoo has announced that Glue Pages are now live in the US market. Barry wrote about Glue when it first appeared in India. Glue Pages are essentially structured search results, pulling content on particular queries or topics from a range of sources: Wikipedia, news, Yahoo Answers, image search, blogs (in some cases) and video. There are also paid search ads on the page. The sources change with the particular topic and not all topics are available, although the Yahoo Search Blog says more will be added over time. Glue in the US has a somewhat different format than in India. Compare pages/re [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Consumer | Top News | Yahoo: Search | Yahoo: User Interface

Yahoo News is inviting its throngs of readers to try its next version, which has new design and content features. Readers will immediately notice a wider footprint on the new Yahoo News, as well as larger text and other new design elements. Content has also been rearranged, with easier access to the most popular stories of the day and top news videos from around the country. TechCrunch reports another interesting change: Readers coming to Yahoo News from social media sites will see shorter versions of news stories at first, with links to similar stories featured more prominently. As TechCru [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Content | Yahoo: News | Yahoo: User Interface

Yahoo has announced they are testing a new home page in the US, UK, France and India. The new homepage contains information from both Yahoo and non-Yahoo properties, such as AOL Mail and Gmail data. They will also keep the "Featured" section more up to date with "timely content from across the Web" and adding more social content based on your network. Here is a screen capture: You can read more feedback on this test at Techmeme. [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Consumer | Yahoo: User Interface

It appears that Yahoo has started to group results together by indenting listings from the same domain under the first search listing. For example, a search on search engine land at Yahoo returns these two results, the second being indented. Google is also conducting some testing with their search listings. Tom Critchlow at the Distilled blog noticed Google is giving him the option to sort the Google web results by date or by relevance. I personally do not see it, but Tom shared a screen shot of it in action: Notice at the top right it says "Sorted by relevance" as the default, but gi [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Consumer | Google: User Interface | Yahoo: User Interface

TechCrunch reports that Yahoo is testing out a new purple logo. The new logo, as shown in the picture from TechCrunch, shows Yahoo changed the font to a more curvy look and went from red to a purple color. Danny and I wonder if the new logo, if it happens, might be part of Yahoo trying to assert its independence by showing Yahoo purple. It is official that Yahoo is no longer in talks with Microsoft and there are rumors that Google and Yahoo will be announcing a search partnership in about 20 minutes. [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Consumer | Yahoo: User Interface

Yahoo's relatively new CTO Ari Balogh expanded upon Yahoo's "open" initiatives in a keynote speech to the Web2.0 conference yesterday. There's a very extensive discussion, including a video of the keynote, on the TechCrunch site (additional coverage in Search Engine Journal). The SearchMonkey beta is the first step in executing on the strategy, which will roll out in increments over the next several months. The "OS" part is not "operating system" but "open strategy." Beyond openness, the themes of Balogh's talk were making Yahoo more social, more consistent and unified, more personal, and eve [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Consumer | Yahoo: APIs | Yahoo: General | Yahoo: Other | Yahoo: Search | Yahoo: Search Monkey | Yahoo: User Interface

Since the advent of "blended" or "universal search" last year across the major engines, there's been ongoing discussion and speculation about its impact on user behavior and search marketing. Gord Hotchkiss last year wrote extensively about how blended search (on Google) has in fact shifted the user focus from the so-called "golden triangle" at the upper left of the page to a more distributed pattern that resembles an "E." Now search marketing firm iProspect has released a study (conducted by JupiterResearch) that shows users are responding to the various specialized content types within sear [...]

Related Topics: Channel: SEO | Google: Universal Search | Microsoft: Bing | Microsoft: Bing SEO | Search Marketing: Branding | Search Marketing: General | SEO: General | SEO: Video Search | Stats: Search Behavior | Yahoo: SEO | Yahoo: User Interface

Today, at the inaugural Search Marketing Expo West conference, Yahoo plans to unveil a project code-named "Search Monkey," a set of open-source tools that allow users and publishers to annotate and enhance search results associated with specific web sites. The new enhancements differ from Yahoo's "Shortcuts" that sometimes appear at the top of search result pages. Shortcuts are served by Yahoo whenever the search engine is confident that the shortcut links are more relevant than the other web search results on the page. Often, shortcuts highlight content from Yahoo's own network of sites. Th [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Consumer | Yahoo: User Interface

The LocallyType blog noticed that Yahoo has updated their Yahoo UK home page. The new design has more clean space around the search box. The Yahoo content and services don't truly begin until after the search box is displayed. I am told that the Yahoo UK home page looked more like the current Yahoo US home page in the beginning. Here is what the UK version looks like now. [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Consumer | Yahoo: User Interface

For the first time, Yahoo has beaten Google in the annual University of Michigan American Customer Satisfaction Index (ACSI). The survey measures U.S. consumer satisfaction across a broad range of business and product categories including "e-business," which covers search. The survey asks a statistically representative sample of consumers to rate their experiences with portals and search engines according to a number of criteria, which produces an overall satisfaction score on a 100 point scale. The search/portal category has been rated since 2000. Until this year, Google has always lead the A [...]

Related Topics: AOL: General | Ask: Ask 3D | Channel: Consumer | Google: Other | Microsoft: Other | Stats: General | Stats: Popularity | Stats: Relevancy | Stats: Search Behavior | Yahoo: Mail | Yahoo: User Interface

Both Yahoo and Google seem to be testing new search results pages. Karl Ribas found that Yahoo is testing a design that has a thin top blue bar above search results. The blue really doesn't remind me of Yahoo—Yahoo to me is about the purple and white colors. But the blue does remind me of Microsoft. Philipp Lenssen reports that Google is once again testing a new user interface for search results. You can see from the screen shot Philipp posted that Google has placed vertical search options as well as related searches on the left side pane of the page. You can reproduce this yourse [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Consumer | Google: User Interface | Yahoo: User Interface

Last week on Just Behave, I talked about the importance of consideration sets in search; how we tend to slice off three or four top listings in our consideration set at the beginning of our interaction with the search results page. Today I want to talk about another concept, no less important, that looks at the very first second of interaction with the search results page. I've referred to it in the past as the Area of Greatest Promise. Start High and To the Left, Work down from There As I mentioned last week, there is an almost universal behavior amongst North Americans when they intera [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Strategy | Google: User Interface | Search & Usability | Stats: Search Behavior | Yahoo: User Interface

Yahoo Quick Links are little links found beneath some of the search results at Yahoo Search. As an example, a search on barry schwartz at Yahoo Search brings up a Wikipedia entry for the other Barry Schwartz with Quick Links; it looks like this: I have been covering Yahoo Quick Links for a while and got some official answers from Yahoo about how they work. In short, Yahoo Quick Links can happen through both natural and paid means. Buying Yahoo Quick Links Yes, you can buy Quick Links for your listings. Yahoo told me "clients participating in Search Submit Pro can submit their Quick Lin [...]

Related Topics: Channel: SEO | Yahoo: SEO | Yahoo: User Interface

Yahoo Removes Category (Directory) Links From Under Search Results at Search Engine Roundtable reports that Yahoo has removed the links from the individual search listings to the Yahoo Directory. In the past, if a page had a listing in the Yahoo Directory, that directory listing would be shown as part of the page's listing in web search results. Here is a before and after that illustrates this: Before: After: This seems to be a pretty big move from Yahoo. This is just one more step in the direction of folding the once very popular Yahoo Directory. Postscript: Search Engine Watch has c [...]

Related Topics: Channel: SEO | Yahoo: SEO | Yahoo: User Interface

As humans, we have a limited capacity to consider our alternatives. Within our brains, there is a limited amount of shelf space available for us to temporarily put our options on to examine them and make our decision. We have cognitive limits to the amount of information we can process at any given time. When it comes to memory capacity, it seems that the limit for humans is seven, plus or minus two. This comes from a 1956 paper by cognitive psychologist George A. Miller called The Magical Number Seven, Plus or Minus Two. He referred to it as channel capacity, the number of cognitive an [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Strategy | Google: User Interface | Search & Usability | Stats: Search Behavior | Yahoo: User Interface

The Super Bowl is known by advertisers as one of the biggest marketing events of the year, but do search ads play a part of that? Reprise Media released this years Super Bowl Search Marketing Scorecard that explains that although there were improvements from last year, this year was still lacking in terms of integrating their offline and online ad efforts. The study also claims that marketers used poor call-to-actions in their ads and lacked in driving users to interact with their brands online. So how did each advertiser rate? The PDF score card puts SalesGenie.com, Snickers and GoDaddy [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Strategy | Search Marketing: Branding | Yahoo: Marketing | Yahoo: User Interface

This week I caught up with Larry Cornett, the relatively new Director of User Experience Design at Yahoo and Kathryn Kelly, Director of PR for Yahoo! Search. Again, to set the stage for the interview, here are some high level findings from our eye tracking study that I'll be discussing in more detail with Larry and Kathryn. Emphasis on Top Sponsored Results In the study we found Yahoo emphasized the top sponsored results more than either Microsoft or Google. They showed top sponsored results for more searches and devoted more real estate to them. This had the effect of giving Yahoo! the [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Strategy | Search & Usability | Stats: Search Behavior | Yahoo: User Interface