Yahoo Testing Alpha (Beta) Multi Search

Apr 4, 2007 at 4:03pm ET by Chris Sherman

Spotted via Micro Persuasion and Digital Inspiration, Yahoo’s just launched Alpha (in beta version, natch). Both of the aforementioned blogs call Alpha a customized search engine similar to Google Custom Search Engine, but Alpha is really more of a multi-search tool that submits your query to multiple sources and aggregates results from all of them on one page.

By default, Yahoo web search results appear on the left, with drop down boxes on the right providing access to Flickr photos, Yahoo Answers, YouTube, Yahoo News, Wikipedia and Yahoo Sponsored results. You can remove any of these, or add any additional source (thus the customized comparison) provided it has an RSS feed. You can also easily change the layout of your Alpha page.

Rather than a true custom search engine, Alpha looks more like a Yahoo experiment to surface more of its deep content through a single query, similar to Google’s OneBox and Ask’s Smart Answers. I’ve got a request into Yahoo for more information and I’ll post an update when I’ve learned more.

Postscript: The Alpha Blog (which was blank when we looked yesterday), now says this was part of Yahoo7′s (Australia) Hack Day:

Like most Yahoo! offices around the world, Australia participates in Hack Day.

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.

We thought the idea was good enough to develop further into a public beta site and get a few ideas from the Australian search community at large.

And, yes, this is indeed a beta, so we expect there are many many improvements to make along the way, so be sure to tell us what you think!

Related Topics: Yahoo: Search

About The Author: Chris Sherman (@CJSherman) is Executive Editor of SearchEngineLand.com and President of Searchwise LLC, a Boulder Colorado based Web consulting firm. He also programs and co-chairs the Search Marketing Expo - SMX conference series. See more articles by Chris Sherman

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http://www.resourceshelf.com gary price

Chris:
Also reminds me of Vivisimo’s Bio-Meta Cluster
http://tinyurl.com/yqa4du

or Pretrieve.
http://www.pretrieve.com

Of course, engines like Indeed.com, SimplyHired.com, and the new Hound.com do the same type of thing for job searching.

Back when I was at SEW, I wrote about how meta or federated search just might be the next big thing.
So many databases, so little time.
http://blog.searchenginewatch.com/blog/060113-140357

and this article about using Clusty to search multiple blog databases.
http://blog.searchenginewatch.com/blog/050718-151216
http://www.resourceshelf.com gary price

oops, a bit quick on the post button. I wanted to add that for several years all of the major engines in have gone directly to specialty/vertical databases and posted results or links to results) directly on a web search results page in the Smart Answer, OneBox, Shortcut, Direct Answer format you mentioned.

Examples:

Ask
http://www.ask.com/web?q=market+cap+csco&qsrc=0&o=0&l=dir

Google
http://www.google.com/search?aq=t&oq=weather+in+&hl=en&q=weather+in+las+vegas

Live
http://search.live.com/results.aspx?q=barry+bonds&mkt=en-us&FORM=LVCP&go.x=0&go.y=0&go=Search

Yahoo
http://tinyurl.com/ypx96b

Also, most of these engines will also pull material from their non-web databases and place results inline on a web results page:

A couple of Many Examples:

A
http://www.ask.com/web?q=pics+golden+gate+bridge&qsrc=0&o=0&l=dir
G
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=news+iraq
L
http://search.live.com/results.aspx?q=pics+australia&go.x=0&go.y=0&form=QBRE
Y
http://search.yahoo.com/search?p=starbucks+seattle+wa&fr=yfp-t-501&toggle=1&cop=mss&ei=UTF-8
http://searchengineland.com Danny Sullivan

For me, it resembles Google’s experimental SearchMash the most. I mean, consider.

SearchMash: Web in main column, then side column results in boxes that open up, Images, Blogs, Video, Wikipedia.

Alpha: Web in main column, then side column results in boxes that open up, Images, Answers, Video, News, Wikipedia, Paid Links.

So Alpha has a few more data sources, but the concept in general is the same other than the significant ability to add custom sources for searching (which, of course, A9 offers).
http://www.resourceshelf.com gary price

Danny:
I agree with your comments and in the past hour (with a bit more time looking at) Yahoo Alpha I see lots of A9.

Perhaps the most useful thing about Bio-Meta Cluster is that not only can you perform a simultaneous search of several databases (you select) but the searcher also gets the dynamic clustering.

Now, wearing my Ask.com cap for a moment, the AskX prototype
http://www.askx.com
offers results from disparate sources one a single page with one click.

Take this search for Los Angeles.
http://www.ask.com/w#q=los+angeles&page=1

With one search and a single click you find:

+ Smart Answer with direct links to various sources (chamber of commerce, official city site)

+ A selection of a few images from the Ask Image database, click for more.

+ Current Time in LA.

+ Current Weather

+ Dictionary definition

+ A blurb from AMG about the LA music scene.

+ Organic results

OF course, with one more click, you are at the actual data source to dive deeper.

You’ll also see Zoom related results to narrow or focus a search.

Here’s another example for a popular television program that ended its run last season.
http://www.ask.com/w#ch=web&pg=1&q=%22the%20oc%22&qsrc=1&rnd=1175742991927

One-stop, meta, cross-database, or what others call “federated searching” is growing rapidly in the library world. I’ve written many times about what libraries (of all types) offer in terms of content, 24x7x365 with just a library card required (for a particular library). Here’s an example of what the San Francisco Public Library offers. They call it cross-database search.
http://search3.webfeat.org/sfplAdvSearch.html

Also, allow me to amend me past comment re: job search tools. While they do provide one-click access to job postings from various databases and specific sites, they are not exactly the same thing as what we’re talking about here.
zdview

Nothing new in the search result, even found some SPAM sites. just a search with Ajax+more content from Yahoo community.
http://www.resourceshelf.com gary price

Btw, don’t forget Yahoo also has a shopping search “test bed” site called Trovetopia that’s been around for many months.
http://www.trovetopia.com

Brian Smith wrote a bit about the site on SEW last June.
http://blog.searchenginewatch.com/blog/060612-094804

Yahoo registered for a trademark last May. In the app they say the term was first used on April 14, 2006.