Yahoo's new patent decides that the way a site look matters

[Jazajay]

Yahoo's new patent apparently takes web design into account,
In fact there are 51 elements of web design that could now be annazled by Yahoo! not just 1 -
http://appft1.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO2&Sect2=HITOFF&u=%2Fnetahtml%2FPTO %2Fsearch-adv.html&r=1&p=1&f=G&l=50&d=PG01&S1=20080040195.PG NR.&OS=dn/20080040195&RS=DN/20080040195

It can be important to make web pages easy and pleasing to use,[...]. If such web pages are not easy and pleasing to use, the money-making potential of those web pages can be jeopardized.

or -

A method determines a usability measure for a web page

or -

. A representation of the web page is processed in view of a usability model.[..]
The method of claim 21, wherein:the plurality of discernible characteristics includes visual and structural characteristics.

Please note due to plagizism [..] means content that I have snipped out.

The full article/patent is in the link with the whole patent submitted by Yahoo! to the US patent and trademark office.But apparently my "hairbrained theories" about web design and usability, which are based on 30 years of information architecture I may add, are nothing to do with SEO, even though IA's have known for years that web design has a lot to do with the site visitors perception of revelance.

This is the SEO forum, it isn't about how PEOPLE look at sites, it's about how CRAWLERS look at URLS. This is about people's businesses, it is no place for fanciful, harebrained theories that have nothing to do with Information Retrieval.
-Marcia, Forum Moderator, SEW

I guess your right it obviously doesn't and Yahoo! must be wasting their time
Take it easy.
Jaza

[cryptblade]

Hmm. Interesting. Maybe this gets more important and ultimately the importance of Yahoo rankings increase as Yahoo and Google work more closely together?

[Marcia]

This is the SEO forum, it isn't about how PEOPLE look at sites, it's about how CRAWLERS look at URLS. This is about people's businesses, it is no place for fanciful, harebrained theories that have nothing to do with Information Retrieval.
-Marcia, Forum Moderator, SEW

To establish context, that was in a thread asking about tables vs CSS divs for SEO:

http://forums.searchenginewatch.com/...ad.php?t=11695

So the comment remains as solid as ever: nowhere have aesthetics and beauty ever been mentioned as used in scoring by search engines for getting high rankings.

That Yahoo! patent is not about organic search algorithms. It's about usability.

The abstract:

QUANTITATIVE ANALYSIS OF WEB PAGE CLUTTER THAT ACCOUNTS FOR SUBJECTIVE PREFERENCES

A method determines a usability measure for a web page. A representation of the web page is processed in view of a usability model. The usability indication is determined based on the processing step. The representation of the web page may include an indication of at least one of structural and visual elements. For example, the indication of structural elements may include a document object model of the web page. The usability model may be a statistical model, such as a linear regression model, that provides an estimate of a statistical relationship between the usability measure and a plurality of characteristics discernible from the representation of the web page.

[Jazajay]

Sorry if I have taken a while to get back around, I have been over run with work the last few weeks.

My point was actually based on information archutecture and useability and how to make a web page reveleant to users with a certain persona.

The point, which by your above comment, you have failed to understand is it's not how the web page looks but how the information is displayed, that is two completely differnet concepts entirely, and one that has been proven time and time again to increase any website's conversion rate due to better onpage relevancy to the site visitor.

Google has had a simliar patent to this for a while, Detecting and Rejecting Annoying documents. My point in the other thread, to your question, was based in the future as that is the only answer that could have been to such a question, and that it will matter one day as the search engines better understand the meaning between words, again i'm not talking beauty here!

This is a step towards it IMO with Yahoo! possibly condsidering the useability of a page as a factor, otherwise why submit such a patent?

I'm sure you will disagree though....
....but only time will tell.

Jaza

[Marcia]

This is a step towards it IMO with Yahoo! possibly condsidering the useability of a page as a factor, otherwise why submit such a patent?

How about because Yahoo is a huge portal with thousands (maybe hundreds of thousands) of content pages. They've also developed Yslow as a tool for webmasters, which is lovely of them to share, but people wanting to know about ranking in their engine (which is a different issue) want to know "what are the Yahoo ranking factors," which is about as different as "what's for lunch?"

I'm sure you will disagree though....

Yes, I will.

Aesthetic beauty and usability are separate issues (even from each other), but where is it documented that either one has bearing on scoring for organic search at the present time?