There’s no denying that Google is far and away the most visited search engine on the Internet, eclipsing Yahoo in terms of user base by quite a significant margin. Is it possible that Yahoo could make up some of that ground by leveraging itself as a niche search portal, specializing in social search?
Gord Hotchkiss sat down with Yahoo’s Director of User Experience, Larry Cornett, for an exclusive interview that takes a look at Yahoo’s changing focus at it relates to search, and its strategy for competing with Google.
One of the prevalent themes that seemed to recur throughout the interview was the idea of Yahoo as a “community driven” search engine, a social portal if you will.
With the launch of Brand Universes, Yahoo is clearly leaning toward a user-generated experience with its content offerings, so perhaps it makes sense that the company would be leveraging search in the same direction.
This is an excerpt from the interview, which can be found in its entirety at Search Engine Land:
I’d say one of the key differentiators that you’ve seen released last year, and Terry Semel actually talks about this, is that we’re starting to introduce social search. If you look at Yahoo Answers, it’s one of the key examples of that. It’s a very exciting site that’s performing very well.
There’s a lot of great press around it, and we starting to integrate that within the search experience itself, so you can do certain types of queries within search and at the bottom of the page you’ll see relevant best answers that are brought from Yahoo’s Answers. In many cases people look at that and say that it actually adds value. That’s one of the key differentiators here; there is definitely a social aspect to Yahoo Search.
Flickr photo sharing, del.icio.us social bookmarking, and Yahoo Answers are just some of the services that the company is looking to integrate within the search landscape, taking the process from the simplicity of entering a search term and perusing results to a more holistic experience in which the user can more deeply explore a given search topic.
Cornett continues outlining Yahoo’s social search focus in the Yahoo Search Blog:
But really, how does Social Search enhance search, you ask? I think the following analogy captures the essence of that synergy. There are a number of raw materials required for the creation of “art”. The raw horsepower of machinery has made the refinement and access to these materials increasingly easier.
But, no one would argue that simply blending these materials together results in art. It takes the human hands of an artist to create beauty and meaning. You need human talent to bring those raw materials together in a holistic way to create something that no machine could ever produce.
The question is, however, will the social search experience be enough to wrestle away any piece of the search market that Google currently exerts an utter stranglehold upon?
Will 2007 be the year that Yahoo becomes a player in the search engine realm again?
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Joe is a staff writer for Murdok. Visit Murdok for the latest ebusiness news.
