Yahoo has released the beta version of a new service called Yahoo Glue. What Yahoo Glue does is piece together results from different popular sites and bring them to you on one page. For example, a search for an NFL team will bring up results from Wikipedia, Yahoo Sports (including stats, rosters, schedules, etc), YouTube, Yahoo Maps, Yelp, Flickr, Yahoo Groups, and Yahoo Answers.
A search for a musician might bring up some of these same types of results, but might replace stats, schedules, and rosters with album reviews, concert tickets, LastFM tracks, etc.
At this point in time, Yahoo Glue is not going to work for all searches. For example, there is no Glue Page for me.
Evidently I haven’t achieved the level of stardom of a Madonna. Writers are not excluded though. They have Stephen King and Robert Scoble. Julie Demsey at the Yahoo Search Blog explains:
We’re starting with a limited set of topics (more will be added over time), pulling together content from the best places on the Web onto one Yahoo! Glue page. These pages are built using an algorithm that automatically places the most relevant modules on a page, giving you a visually rich, diverse page all about the topic in which you’re interested…
For those that may be wondering, our intention with Yahoo! Glue beta is not to replace the Yahoo! Search experience in the US. We’re always challenging ourselves to explore innovative new ways to deliver great experiences. Glue is one of those experiments, with a goal of giving users one more visual way to browse and discover new things from across the Web. We’ll be working to expand the number of Glue pages, improve the experience and incorporate your feedback into future versions.
Yahoo originally toyed with the Glue Pages concept with Yahoo India. The pages retrieved from Yahoo Glue will certainly have value to users, but I think it’s going to depend a lot on how Yahoo integrates the service into everyday Yahoo use when it comes to attracting a mainstream audience.
