Yahoo’s release of its own blog search was expected to follow Google’s, and it is now up and running. Kinda.
Yahoo has made the choice to differentiate itself by trying to bring “blogs to the masses”, essentially mixing blog search results with news articles. The concept, which is interesting, is to make people aware of these additional content sources by displaying them as a right side bar. In the enclosed example, a search on “Yahoo Search Blog” brings results from both sources.
I see two issues with the current implementation: 1) the “blog search only” option is not directly available, you have to click on “More Blog Results” in the blog results window and then you have to change the keyword part of the URL manually to search for a new term, and 2) the depth of the index seems fairly limited.
Trying an ego search on my name just leads to a couple of dozens results, against hundreds with other search engines. On the positive side, the integration of Flickr pictures is cool. However this is a feature Technorati has had for over a year.
So all in all, whilst I buy the interest of mixing both sources, I don’t understand why Yahoo decided to launch with a sub-par product, especially given the excellent podcast search they launched… yesterday. Jeremy is rationalizing this on the basis of providing something different, but this integration should be offered as a plus, not an alternative to providing solid blog search.
More:
- The official announcement on the Yahoo Search Blog
- Om also thinks that the release is too little too soon
- Search Engine Watch thinks that “Yahoo's blending of news and blog sources is a nice way to get perspectives on current events from both professional and amateur sources”
- Niall Kennedy has a detailed first look
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