Yahoo Glues Together Relevancy

By Chris Crum - Thu, 11/20/2008 - 10:17

Launches New Yahoo Glue Service

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.

News Tags: Search, Yahoo, search relevancy, Yahoo Glue, Glue Pages

About the author:
Chris Crum has been a part of the WebProNews team and the iEntry Network of B2B Publications since 2003.

5 Comments

By David (WPN reader) - Thu, 11/20/2008 - 22:27

can this stop seo consultants?

this is a great tool for informational or business research, as you get all the information you need in the one place, and it appears to be harder to influence through seo campaigns, unless u focus around news articles...

i think there is a place for this, and good work, just needs a little more gui work and it will be a great tool for novice users to the net.

try a search for "google" and u get business focused results, or "madonna" and you get media focused results, all of the results really plug Yahoo services, which i think is a great business model for them.

By Chris Crum - Fri, 11/21/2008 - 11:49

RE: can this stop seo consultants?

It depends on what you search for. A search for "Cincinnati Reds" for example brings up some Google stuff interestingly. Besides YouTube videos, there is a section pulling from Google Blog Search results.

By SEO Chester (WPN reader) - Thu, 11/20/2008 - 11:30

Yahoo Glue

Yahoo seem to be trying all angles possible to come up with a big G beating search formula, this is deinately not that, but if intergrated in a passive manner into everyday Yahoo searches I think "Glue" could improve their SERPS user interaction possibilities.

By Chris Crum - Thu, 11/20/2008 - 12:01

RE: Yahoo Glue

They certainly seem full of ideas lately. I think we are going to see some really interesting things happen over the next year as their whole "open" initiative really takes off. I'm not convinced that they're going to overpower Google, but they might make things a little more competitive.

By Diamonds (WPN reader) - Thu, 11/20/2008 - 15:33