March 9, 2007

Yahoo Answers Gets Friendly

Earlier this week, Yahoo launched a beta of the new Answers Network, which adds some social networking features to its Yahoo Answers product. It's yet another example of Yahoo's moves to integrate social media tools throughout its network, as it has with Flickr, del.icio.us, and MyBlogLog.

Basically, users can choose to build a network of contacts on Yahoo Answers, so that content from people you find most helpful will appear higher on your page. The features are similar to what Eurkester announced last month, but has not yet implemented.

Posted by Kevin Newcomb at 10:31 AM | Permalink

March 1, 2007

John McCain and Hillary Clinton post on Yahoo Answers

Before announcing his presidential candidacy yesterday, Republican Senator John McCain asked Yahoo users, “What would you do to stop wasteful government spending in Washington?” on Yahoo Answers. John McCain is the second 2008 presidential hopeful to post on Yahoo Answers, following Democratic Senator Hillary Clinton, who posted her question just over a month ago, "Based on your own family's experience, what do you think we should do to improve health care in America?"

According to Hitwise data for January 2006, Yahoo Answers is the leading Q&A site on the Web. And John McCain's question has currently solicited over 15,000 answers with responses ranging from placing a limit on politicians' compensation and tenure, to changing rules for lobbyist endorsements and taking a closer look at immigration policy.

The presidential candidates join a list of more than 70 prominent figures that include Oprah Winfrey, Leonardo DiCaprio, Stephen Hawking, Al Gore, Bono, and Donald Trump who have posted questions around globally-pressing issues for the collective knowledge of the Yahoo Answers community to help solve. They see Yahoo's audience as a great way to build awareness for the causes that matter to them most.

Back in 1992, Ross Perot used CNN's "Larry King Live" to launch his presidential campaign as an Independent. Times change.

Posted by Greg Jarboe at 4:13 PM | Permalink

December 13, 2006

Yahoo! Answers Celebrates 1st Birthday

On the heels of the Google Answers closure, Yahoo's social question and answer service is enjoying a much different experience. Yahoo! Answers officially turns one year old today, and is celebrating in true Yahoo style.

Loren Baker over at Search Engine Journal published results of a survey commissioned by Yahoo, which strongly indicates how well the public has latched onto the concept of social media, and provides some additional insight from Greg Sterling. Meanwhile, poor Barry doesn't even get a gift from Yahoo!... Here's an idea, Barry - maybe you should slow down your blogging and start posting more Answers! (j/k).

Posted by Elisabeth Osmeloski at 12:19 PM | Permalink

November 21, 2006

Answers.com Integrates Yahoo Answers Into Content

Answers.com announced that they have integrated Yahoo Answers directly into their content. So if you do a search at Answers.com, you should see at the bottom right portion of the page, a box for Yahoo Answers results that match on those keywords. Gary Price has more sample searches and expert opinion on this integration.

Posted by Barry Schwartz at 9:38 AM | Permalink

November 20, 2006

Yahoo Integrates Answers Into Search Results

Yahoo has finally officially integrated Yahoo Answers into the Yahoo Search results, according to an email we received from the company. We reported back a month and a half ago that Yahoo Tests Enhanced Yahoo Answers Integration In Search Results but now everyone can see it for themselves by conducting a search for vacation ideas.

If you do not see it, I have posted a screen capture below of the before and after.

Posted by Barry Schwartz at 9:15 AM | Permalink

September 4, 2006

Yahoo Answers Launches In The UK

The Guardian Unlimited reports that Yahoo, today, launched the Yahoo Answers product in the UK. The UK version is now available at http://uk.answers.yahoo.com/ and is also available on the left hand navigation of Yahoo UK's home page. Reportedly, Yahoo will be launching a campaign around the Answers product in the that is the "largest advertising campaign in Britain since the dotcom boom."

Posted by Barry Schwartz at 10:44 AM | Permalink

September 1, 2006

Yahoo Tests Enhanced Yahoo Answers Integration In Search Results

Threadwatch discovered Yahoo testing a new way of displaying Yahoo Answer results within the Yahoo Search results interface. The new interface is larger and more pronounced, but in the same location (under the main organic results) as before. Threadwatch posted a screen capture of this here. I have posted a comparison of the current integration of Yahoo Answers and the test integration of Yahoo Answers at the Search Engine Roundtable.

Posted by Barry Schwartz at 9:15 AM | Permalink

August 16, 2006

Yahoo Releases Yahoo Answers API

The Yahoo Search Blog announced the release of the Yahoo Answers API. The API will allow developers to pull questions from the Yahoo Answers database by search, category, and user. You can even get the answers for those questions. More details at http://developer.yahoo.com/answers/.

Postscript: Jeremy Zawodny suggests to me that the Yahoo Answers API will soon allow writing to the Yahoo Answers database, and not just read only access. Niche answer social networks, here we come?

Posted by Barry Schwartz at 8:46 AM | Permalink

July 7, 2006

Dr. Stephen Hawking Turns To Yahoo Answers For How Humans Will Survive; Bono Posts Too

Wow. Dr. Stephen Hawking, yes, the real Stephen Hawking, has turned to Yahoo Answers for help. How can the human race survive the next hundred years?, he asks, in a question that Yahoo reassures us is really from the famous physicist and not a joke. And stay tuned, because Yahoo's planning to get U2's Bono to post later today.

How's it going for Hawking? There were 15,867 answers when I looked. That means his next question should be, "How can I review all these answers?" The answer is to sit back and let the Yahoo Answers community itself do it. It will be interesting to see what's voted as the best answer.

For more on Yahoo Answers, see my past article, Look Out Wikipedia, Here Comes Yahoo Answers!

Postscript: Bono has added his post now on ending poverty, says Yahoo. Hawking Seeks Answers on Yahoo from the Associated Press also has some nice background on his involvement and how Yahoo staffers will help him sift through responses.

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 6:13 AM | Permalink

June 22, 2006

Google Answers: Ask Whatever You Like, Except About Google

We wrote earlier about Google pulling a question at Google Answers about Google. Philipp Lenssen at Google Blogoscoped followed-up further and found that Google officially disallows people to ask questions about the company because the researchers at Google Answers aren't Google employees.

Got that? Freelance researchers are apparently qualified to answer questions about any other company in the world, but when it comes to Google, special treatment is required. Incredible.

In Google Answers Question Removed, Philipp says he was told:

Questions about Google, Google Search, and search engine optimization are not allowed because Google Answers researchers are not employees of Google. Researchers don?t have access to any ?inside? information. The information they do have access to is available for free on the Google help pages or by writing to Google support.

And Steve Hall, who started this all when his question was rejected earlier this week, was told:

We'd like to clarify the reason for removal of this question. Please note that Google Answers researchers are not employees of Google. They are independent contractors, and they only have access to information about Google and Google Search that is publicly available. Therefore, all users with questions about Google and/or Google Search are directed to these Google support pages.

In the comments to Steve's post, someone raises a good point that Google might have this policy to help keep those getting responses from thinking they are getting "official" information from Google. I can understand that. But that can also be dealt with differently than just removing questions wholescale. And no questions on search engine optimization, as Philipp was told? Please.

For the record, the Google Answers FAQ says this about questions that aren't allowed:

Google Answers discourages and may remove questions that:

request private information about individuals
want assistance in conducting illegal activities
are meant to sell or advertise products
refer or relate to adult content
are homework or exam questions
seek specific information about Google or Google Answers (email answers-support@google.com instead)

Fair to say, I think that last line should go. People should be able to ask about Google and Google Answers, at the very least because such restrictions make the entire system seem silly.

More important, the Google help pages and other information about Google do NOT have everything you'd want to know about Google. Consider:

How does Google technically perform censorship in China? (Answer -- see this good New York Times article, with info not on the Google web site that I know of)
How did a web site recently get so many spam pages indexed so quickly in Google? (Answer -- our article is one of many that explains its both a glitch with Google's site: command plus probably just a big problem with Google's spam control pages, something not covered on the Google web site)
Is it cloaking if the New York Times puts up a page in front of those clicking from Google to reach paid articles? (Answer -- it's a matter of debate, as going on in our Search Engine Watch Forums. Google has general guidelines, but there's no agreement on whether these apply. And there's nothing on the Google site giving a definitive answer).

Out of curiosity, I did a little searching at Google Answers to see if much was getting through about Google. Not much, that I could see. But this question caught my eye, Mod Rewrite code for the .htaccess file. It asks:

I have a website called www.greathostels.com it is written in php i need to know the code to put in the htaccess file to make it search engine friendly using mod_rewrite as at the moment its not effectivly spidered.

The answer was a list of pointers to other sites, all of which look pretty useful to me, someone who is not an expert. But the person asking also raised a good point:

If asking a Php code question i think the answer should be provided by someone who knows PhP code.

Which got him this over-the-top response:

Apparently you negelected to read the FAQs for the Google Answers service:

"Are Researchers experts in their field?"

"All Google Researchers are tested to ensure that they are expert searchers with excellent communication skills. Some of them also have expertise in various fields. Your question may be answered by an expert in a particular field or by an expert searcher. Either way, if you are unsatisfied with your answer for any reason, you may apply for a full refund." http://answers.google.com/answers/faq.html#experts

Our job is to provide an answer to your question. If we personally lack the expertise to do so, we seek out authoritative resources on the internet.

Therefore, I referred you to an authoritative site which provided information which was extremely specific to your question. To imply that the authors of The SEO Toolset website are not experts in their topic, when they authored precisely the information you requested, and created precisely the URL Rewriting Tool which you so badly need, is the heighth of insolence and absurdity.

I would request that my answer be removed by the editors, simply to remove the taint of my association with you, but they tend not to remove answers which have satisfactorily answered the question.

If you ever plan to use this service again, I suggest you register under a different username, given the fact that other researchers will be more than reluctant to deal with someone who doesn't bother to inform themselves about what to expect from the service.

Ouch. I can understand the researcher feeling slighted. But it's also a fair opinion to have, that it would be nice if an actual expert in the area answered the question. Which brings it back to Google's censorship of questions about itself. It's OK for people to research things like PHP and rewriting, even if they have no expertise in them -- but Google itself is too sensitive a topic?

Oh, but remember, people can write to Google Support to get real expert advice. You mean like I did when Gmail went down for me last week? You mean like Tom Foremski did over at Silicon Valley Watcher when Gmail went down for him yesterday? I don't think he got a response. I know I didn't -- and this is now a week after I had my problem.

Instead, I hunted and hunted through support areas and eventually guessed that a solution for an entirely different problem might work for me. It did. But go read my Getting Gmail To Resume POP Access With Captcha Unlock article, because it explains just how lame the Gmail support documentation is in terms of helping people with this problem. And yet, that's what Google Answers thinks is fine for people to use instead of being able to ask questions?

And as for company questions, while asking about Google is off limits, these are fine:

Apparently, having researchers answer questions about other companies without inside information is OK. It's only Google itself that needs special protection.

What do you think? Should the policy change? I'm going to ask in two places and will postscript links here. The first will be our Search Engine Watch Forums. The second will be Yahoo Answers, where there are no restrictions about asking about Google -- or Yahoo -- that I can see. Perhaps that's one of the reasons it's growing by leaps-and-bounds, as covered in my recent article, Look Out Wikipedia, Here Comes Yahoo Answers!

Want to comment? Come join:

Why Shouldn't Google Answers Let People Ask Questions About Google?, Yahoo Answers
Google Answers: Question Everything But Google, Search Engine Watch Forums

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 8:15 AM | Permalink

June 13, 2006

Yahoo Answers Launches "Ask the Planet 2006" Campaign

Yahoo Answers has launched a new promotional campaign named Ask the Planet 2006. The Yahoo Answers blog describes how this feature will work;

Each weekday a new category will be featured, and each one will be accompanied by a question asked by a notable celebrity, expert, or even a featured user. For each best answer you receive in the category of the day you will get one entry for a chance to win the prize for the day.

The full press release can be found here and if you want to see the big brain in times square check out the pictures at Flickr.

Postscript From Danny: For more about Yahoo Answers, see my article from last week, Look Out Wikipedia, Here Comes Yahoo Answers!

Posted by Barry Schwartz at 9:40 AM | Permalink

June 8, 2006

Yahoo Answers Coming After Wikipedia's Crown?

Look Out Wikipedia, Here Comes Yahoo Answers! from me in SearchDay today looks at new stats that fuel the notion that Yahoo Answers is perhaps becoming a social interacting phenomenon like YouTube or MySpace. As a reference resource, it has come from nowhere to be the third most popular site, just one behind Wikipedia (though percentagewise, it's further back. The longer version of the story for Search Engine Watch members goes into more depth about how Yahoo is building traffic for Yahoo Answers plus how search marketers can appropriately tap into the area. Click here to learn more about becoming a member

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 12:07 PM | Permalink

May 17, 2006

Jeff Weiner Talking At Yahoo Analyst Day

I'm at Yahoo's Analyst Day today, and I thought I'd give a shot at live blogging a session or two. We'll see how it goes, starting with Jeff Weiner, senior vice president, search and marketplace, at Yahoo. He's doing the first session focused exclusively on search, though Lloyd Braun, speaking now, has touched on a few things -- including the new Yahoo Finance charts to come, which look to bring Yahoo up to what Google rolled out with Google Finance.

Slide on web search market size, basically says lots of people search, 1 billion queries estimated worldwide per day, Asia largest growing market, $15 billion estimated in paid search this year, so Yahoo cares about search :)

Differentiating now, web search quality, user experience, vertical search, multimedia search -- all stated briefly as things making Yahoo different but mainly a lead in to what he says is the big differentiator, social search.

Now the generations of search. Newsgroups said to be the closest proxy to search in the early 1990. The alpha chip allowed participation to scale from scientists on newsgroups to millions of webmasters and publishers on the web. (hmm, ok, jeff). Then Inktomi and Google go from millions of web sites hand categorized to billions of pages indexed. And now the next jump -- billions of people on the planet with knowledge. How do you get it?

Now a competitive landscape chart, too quickly to record. Here comes FUSE! You know FUSE, Find Use Share & Expand vision that Yahoo's pitched the past year. Share is at the heart of what they want to do, seeing that as a way to grow.

The Social Search Strategy: get a critical mass of high-quality content (and sadly with My Web, so far they haven't done that, but it might still come. Delicious, Flickr are already successful in their own ways. Also to leverage meta data. "Better search through people" is another motto put out there.

Knowledge Search -- hey, it's Yahoo Answers, with now having 10 million answers maybe is a critical mass success. Here's a personal anecdote from him on using it. Esther Dyson says something about The Queen (ruler of my wife's country) talking about the world smelling like fresh paint. What the hell does that mean? He goes to Yahoo Answers to get an answer (why do I think I could find it in regular web search in only a few minutes -- I'll try later).

Hey! Hey, hey, hey -- OK, now Yahoo has picked up the queen thinks the world smells like fresh paint from Yahoo Answers and puts it at the top of Yahoo regular/web search.

Much of the world has it now, France, Germany, Spain, Italy, Latin America to get it soon.

Moving on to Yahoo Groups, which has a Yahoo Answers module in it now. Here come numbers. Yahoo Groups has 6 million groups, 90 million members participating. "That's a lot of knowledge. That's a lot of untapped knowledge." Especially people who might not have the tech savvy to publish in other ways. Sure -- but come, it hasn't been that hard to do web pages or dare I saw blogs.

Now social bookmarking, good it's said to get opinions and trusted sources rather than factual stuff web search is said to be good at. Jaguar typed into Yahoo, first thing in your mind? Car -- "yeah, for this audience it is," he says. Oh, here it comes -- multiple meanings of Jaguar. I've got stuff MSN talked about years ago showing how there are different meanings (and they had a good system to give you different options). On delicious, most searches for jaguar bring up the operating system. He calls this flavoring. What happens if you take these flavors search experiences from Groups and put it into Yahoo search. "Powerful stuff." Yep, if they do it.

Social media -- it's Flickr time as the eyes of the world. Flickr is changing our society right before our eyes. Wow -- but I supposed so. Goodness knows it's even got me using it :)

Now marry the eyes of the world with the world's most popular home page -- that's Flickr on Yahoo, plus Flickr being on the Nokia N-Series multimedia computers (you know, their smartphones).

Yahoo Video search is coming and will allow sharing. Yeah, so take that YouTube, Google Video. Well, we'll see. Flickr should give them some help here, though.

Monetization! Sponsored listings, graphical media, sponsorships, subscriptions, marketplaces for people to sell -- some of these will come to various new search properties.

Accomplishments. Yahoo Answers out of beta and going general and the 10 million answers I said earlier and a warning that don't expect that number to necessarily be updated going forward. Up from 1 million users in Jan to 7 million know.

Taiwan, got Yahoo Knowledge and grew share in 2004 through 2005.

My Web is mentioned, a redesign is coming in the next few weeks.

Flickr, with the founders on the cover of Newsweek and them making the Time 100 most influential people list (hey, congrats!). 260 million photo tags out there, so don't think these are niche properties. "These properties are changing the world."

Social search is equal to 30 percent of overall web search.

It was never about man versus machine. It was about man with machine -- and that fuels FUSE vision, which is how Yahoo believes it will once again change the game.

Questions (to panel of all speakers from the morning, answers from Jeff unless I note otherwise)

What incentives rolling out to help with participation? Personal, social and economic he says. Personal utility for individuals, get an answer, you want to use it again. Social -- helping people plus getting some ego boost. It's amazing how that's been driving things, he says. It is very much part of what's made Flickr and other properties successful. Economic lightly touched on content match but think he may have meant YPN. It is not as simple as making economic systems he stresses, especially if a system is built on generosity.

How about reputation and trust in social search. The reputation system will be at the heart of ensuring quality. Yahoo Answers is about to get that in a few weeks, so you can see how reputable others are.

What's the deal with query share loss in the use but gaining monetization nonetheless? I don't think there's any one factor, many different dimensions, he thinks social search are making a diffference, getting new customers and much more integration is to come.

It's Safa Rashtchy from Piper Jaffray -- he typed the queen query into Google and got the page from Yahoo. Jeff -- they've been always after high quality, he jokes. Safa - you're happy helping Google with quality. Jeff -- it drives traffic to us. Yes, absolutely. I'm sure Yahoo's thrilled to have their pages everywhere. Safa, how come sharing and answers didn't take off before until Wikipedia. Jeff -- search is far more part of our lives, as is the way we share with others, sharing "has only started to grow." Knowledge search in Korea took off because knowledge corpus there was much smaller. In the US, felt it was already so large, what difference would it make. Then chief engineer played with tools in Taiwan, said this isn't about search, this is about community and sharing -- and that's powerful.

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 1:09 PM | Permalink

May 15, 2006

Yahoo Answers Hits 10 Million Mark; Answers Creeping Into Regular Search Results

Yahoo patted themselves on the back for reaching the 10 million answers posted mark on Yahoo Answers. Part of that announcement was the fact that Yahoo Answers are appearing both organically and through vertical means into the search results.

As SEO Book also points out a search on best dog for apartment will show few results from Yahoo Answers in the organic listings. Also a search on harley davidson will show a Yahoo Shortcut at the bottom of the results page to Yahoo Answers.

The vertical results are nice, but will webmasters begin to complain that Yahoo has a bias towards their own content in the organic results?

Postscript From Danny: 10 million is an impressive number, especially compared to the only 1.2 million (1,183,320) bookmarked pages in the slightly older My Web service that Yahoo also runs. That social search service feels like it is faltering, so perhaps question answering will be how Yahoo gets people involved.

Meanwhile, how's Google Answers doing? I've never seen a total number of questions reported. Poking at it, a search for the and a both give 129,373 matches while -djjdjjdjkkdd (a word not in Google Answers, so looking for answers without that word should give a total count) gives 142,005 matches. So if you trust the counts, Google Answers has dealt with only a fraction of what Yahoo has already covered -- and more than half of those unanswered. That's if you trust the counts. I don't.

Plus, counts don't necessarily mean answers. For example, look at this "question" on Yahoo Answers: "What Is Your Favorite Punk Rock Band." It's more a discussion that getting a particular question answered. Still, there are definitely lots of questions being answered elsewhere on the service, and kudos to it for hitting this milestone.

Posted by Barry Schwartz at 9:41 AM | Permalink

February 23, 2006

Yahoo Answers Adds AJAX Functions, Better Integration, Badges and More

Yahoo Answers, launched on Dec. 7, 2005, has recently added new features such as an Ajax widget, more integration with other Yahoo services, Yahoo Answers Badges, and more RSS functionality. The Yahoo Search Blog announced that these features and reminded us of what Yahoo Answer is all about; "Answers is a question and answer exchange that enables people to tap into the collective wisdom of a world of web users."

The added Ajax functionality is basically a method of typing your question and dynamically getting similar questions below the search box, as you type. This helps the user find the answer to his or her question by completing the question, asking the question better and making it more fun to use.

Yahoo Answers has also integrated the technology beyond Yahoo product reviews. They added Yahoo Mail Answers, 360 Answers and Messenger Answers.

To encourage the smart people to answer the hard questions, Yahoo has given the gatekeepers to the answers badges that show off the users most recently answered questions.

Finally, Yahoo added greater levels of RSS categorization to Yahoo Answers. You can have an RSS feed for a category, RSS feed for specific user's answers or questions and the ability to set up an RSS feed for a keyword phrase. So if you have a problem with your Apple PowerBook's power adapter and want to track if other people have recent issues with it, you can subscribe to a search on that topic. An other form of integration added, I found while reading Loren Baker's coverage, which explains that Yahoo added answers to Yahoo Local. For example, try a search on San Francisco, CA 94103 and scroll down a bit to "People are asking about..." and you will see the Yahoo Answers embedded in the results.

Posted by Barry Schwartz at 8:38 AM | Permalink

December 7, 2005

The Birth of Yahoo Answers

Now out in beta is Yahoo Answers, Yahoo's new social networking/online community/question answering service. The service allows any registered Yahoo user to ask just about any question and hopefully get an answer from another member of the question answering community. Access to Yahoo Answers is free.

Yahoo Answers appears to be definite extension of what Yahoo's Senior Vice President, Search and Marketplace, Jeff Weiner, calls FUSE (Find, Use, Share, Expand) and Yahoo's numerous efforts into online community building with services like Web 2.0.

In my conversation with Ofer Shaked, Director of Engineering for Yahoo Search, I got the impression that this is a true beta with many of the details to be worked out as the service rolls out.

Shaked told me that Yahoo Answers is built to on the company's social search technology with a focus on answering day to day questions of a subjunctive nature (Where can I buy..., What's a good show to see..., etc.) and organizing them into a more structured info base with the use of several features including categories. Its motto is: Ask--Answer--Discover.

Shaked also said in testing "day to day" types of questions have been most popular. Yahoo strives for this to be a self policing community. By the way, at launch, questions can only be asked and answered in English but the company said to look for more language options in 2006.

At the moment Yahoo Answers offers 23 top-level categories like:

* Auto & Transportation * Business & Finance * Computers & Internet * Consumer Electronics * Dining * Education & Reference * Food & Wine * Health & Beauty * Local Businesses * Love & Romance * News & Events * Politics & Government * Pregnancy & Parenting * Science & Math * Society & Culture * Travel

and then sub-categories in each group. At this point, users determine into which category their question goes into. During the beta period questions can only be assigned to a single category. This might be limiting for some users. Shaked added that categories and sub-categories are not set in stone and user tagging might also come into play down the line.

One category I noticed that was currently not available was legal. You've got to wonder if that opens up many issues, but I would think health info would also.

Let's Get Some Points!

Yahoo Answers uses a point and level system to reward participants:

To encourage participation and reward great answers, Yahoo! Answers has a system of points and levels. The number of points you get depends on the specific action you take. The points table below summarizes the point values for different actions. While you can't use points to buy or redeem anything, they do allow everyone to recognize how active and helpful you've been. (And they give you another excuse to brag to your friends.)

As is often the case, Greg Linden makes an excellent point on his blog about the new service. He writes:

Looking at the Yahoo Answers point system, it appears to me that there is an incentive to answer as many questions as possible as quickly as possible without worrying about accuracy. I think that's going to need some tuning.

Greg, I couldn't have said it any better myself. Is this a game (who can get the most points?, who can challenge for the lead?) or a real service to answer questions with accurate, current, and authoritative answers from quality sources? The bragging should come from sharing accurate info, not by accumulating points.

Let's Ask A Question

Asking a question is easy. The hard part is judging the quality of the answer and answerer, but isn't that always the case? Answers are not reviewed by a single source or sources but by members of the community.

First, enter your question into the box found on the top-left of the page. At this point, your query cannot consist of more than 150 characters but there is room for expansion of the question later on. Unfortunately, when I tested the system earlier this week, many of the links were not working for me to proceed.

Questions themselves are grouped into the following categories:

Open Question that are accepting answers
Resolved Questions
Vote on Undecided Questions

In this situation the users can vote on the "best" answer.

There also time limits on how long a question can go unanswered or voted on, though Yahoo says the time limits at this point are still being determined.

Users are allowed to share their sources. I hope that many people complete this part of the page. I wonder what would happen if we search string after search string come from the Google database? Also, I've noticed this elsewhere how many people will get an answer that reads, "go check your library or ask a librarian."

All questions and question authors have a report abuse link located directly below the question or the authors name. It will be interesting to see how active Yahoo is in managing abuse especially if the service grows large in popularity.

In terms of what might best be called "adult questions," Shaked said Yahoo's search technology will recognize basic abuse patterns and has plans to incorporate more abuse mitigation technology for abusive terms into the system.

Shaked told me that they are not enforcing anything at the moment and wants to see how things play out on the service. The service does have a set of user guidelines, so it's possible for "answers" to be removed under certain situations. Users are responsible for their own posts and that includes posting material in-copyright. The question is how actively Yahoo enforce policies surrounding these an related issues.

Searching The Answerbase

Both a simple search box and some advanced features are available for asked and answered questions. Yahoo Answers will be promoted on Yahoo Web Results pages. For example, a user might see a link to seek an answer to their info need on Yahoo Answers.

Unfortunately, the knowledgebase will not be maintained. According to Yahoo, "The knowledgebase is maintained in such a way that Yahoo! removes items that do not follow guidelines." Again, only usage and time will show what this precisely means.

I think an unmaintained knowledgebase (assuming it grows large) could turn into an issue for Yahoo in the long run if proper warnings and disclaimers are not clearly marked and dates (when the question was answered) are provided.

For example, says someone asks who the CEO of Foo Corporation is and a correct answer is given. A year later, after a new CEO is in place, will some users simply search the knowledgebase and not realize that the info might be incorrect?

I think keeping the knowledgebase current for certain types of factual queries is important or at the least for answers to cross references to other, new questions or research tools that might be more up to date.

RSS & Advertising

New answers to questions can be delivered via RSS, questions can be emailed with one click, and a watch list is also available for each user.

What about ads? During my chat with Shaked, he was rather reserved about the future of advertising on Yahoo Answers pages.

When I tested, no ads were visible, but Shaked did mention that in the future answerers with strong reputations (feedback, etc) could be able to benefit from use of the Yahoo Publishers Network on certain pages. Again, this is just talk and it will be interesting to see if people try to game the system for YPN access.

Final Thoughts

One day or even one month test to judge the popularity and usefulness of Yahoo Answers is not enough. It will take some time.

Like I said about the launch of Google Base the other week, I think it will be very illuminating to take a look at Yahoo Answers in a few months to see how the community has developed and also functioning on policing itself to remove spam, bad info, etc. Yahoo will need to be very vigilant to monitor:

Spam
Scams
Uses as a marketing tool (working in plugs for various products into answers).
Infomercials of a different sort.
Members who consistently cause problems

In other words, can the Yahoo Answers community of users police themselves or will Yahoo have to step in and be aggressive in their policing? Will Yahoo Answers simply be the next generation of an online bulletin board and online groups like Yahoo Groups which, unfortunately, deliver plenty of spam.

Also remember that no "answer" tool is perfect for every question. Different answer tools have their strengths and weaknesses. It's about using the correct one at the correct time. Sometimes a friend or colleague can provide you with the answers you need while sometimes you need someone to help you direct you to the correct tool to get the job done in a timely manner. Authority, currency, and related metrics still count!

Looking for some alternatives to consider? See my Other Q&A Services, Most Available For Free! post that's now up as a companion to this article, covering some other online Q&A services.

Postscript: If you're interested in taking the official Yahoo Answers product tour, here it is. Also, Yahoo has added a Yahoo Answers tab to the upper right corner of their clutter-free search.yahoo.com interface.

Posted by Gary Price at 10:01 PM | Permalink

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