Yahoo! Mindset Beta

[rustybrick]

New from Yahoo! Next, Yahoo! Mindset.

Machine learning technology sorts Yahoo! Search results based on the searcher's mindset. Because sometimes you want to buy stuff, and sometimes you just want to find information.

http://www.ysearchblog.com/archives/000114.html

[Chris Boggs]

cool! Just tried it and it seems to work pretty well so far. Will play more this weekend. Thanks Rusty!

[randfish]

Just imagine having to optimize 3 websites - 1 for researchers, 1 for shoppers, and one that's right in the middle. If this takes off, SEOs are in for some trouble.

[Chris Boggs]

I did a search that we regularly rank well for "free website promotion tools," to see if we would appear on either extreme. Ironically, we appear at #1 in the middle and a little "right," but not all the way right. I wonder if the modifier "free" can somehow effect the ability for the rankings to be accurate for the "buy" side.

Side note: I wonder why they chose "buy" on the left and "learn" on the right...political?

[patung]

In playing around with it I've found that all my sites have a greyed out bar, meaning I suppose Yahoo can't categorise them as either shopping or informational.

Whether they rank well in ordinary search or otherwise, whether they are several years old or otherwise, they all vanish when you move the slider either way.

In trying to take a long term view and cover as many bases as possible can anyone speculate on how yahoo arrives at the categorisation and what can be done to influence it?

[St0n3y]

Just imagine having to optimize 3 websites - 1 for researchers, 1 for shoppers, and one that's right in the middle. If this takes off, SEOs are in for some trouble.

Trouble? how so? I see this as being good for SEO.

Originally Posted by Chris Boggs

Side note: I wonder why they chose "buy" on the left and "learn" on the right...political?

This morning it says "shopping" and "researching."



I ran my usual search, "alcatraz," and noticed

• There was an initial display and a final display. The listing ranked first on the final display (the NPS Alcatraz page) did not appear at all in the initial list that appeared, so even a number one ranking might never be seen by the user.

• With the slider bar moved all the way to the right, the first listing was Wikipedia's Alcatraz page which is probably ok, but a couple of the other listings surprised me such as "the fan fic Alcatratraz by the Opimistic God of Death"

• With the slider bar moved all the way to the left I saw listings for a CD, a German restaurant, shoes, etc. I also expected to see links to buy tickets, but these only appeared in the sponsored links.