WebProNews

Barry Schwartz reports that Yahoo plans to roll out a "structured search" functionality in the near future.

The example Barry gives of existing forms of structured search currently available - a Google search for "apartments for rent in Manchester" that brings up dropdowns and drilldowns facilitated by Google Base - illustrates both the challenge and the promise of search as it moves into an era of greater richness and user control. The main challenge is in terms of adoption by information providers. (Back to the metadata issue. Who puts it together? Who bothers to participate? Is Google Base weird for allowing any old protocol to rule? Who decides which protocols get featured in raw Google queries?)

Google Base hasn't been widely adopted as a repository of data, so until it is, experiments in presenting info to users will be halting.

I'm looking forward to discussions of these and similar issues on the Orion Panel on Universal, Blended, and Vertical Search, next Monday Dec. 3 at SES Chicago.

Another can't-miss panel on that day explores privacy and community in this emerging phase of social media.

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