February 8, 2007

Yahoo Launches Pipes, an RSS Remixing Tool

Yahoo has unveiled a new data manipulation/mashup platform called Yahoo Pipes (although they seem to be currently clogged). According to Yahoo, "Pipes is a hosted service that lets you remix feeds and create new data mashups in a visual programming environment. The name of the service pays tribute to Unix pipes, which let programmers do astonishingly clever things by making it easy to chain simple utilities together on the command line."

This is beyond my capacity to properly explain at the moment, and I have tons of more search-related things to cover today, so I'll leave this one to others who know what they're talking about:

For starters, check Techmeme and you'll see everyone that has weighed in thus far.
Tim O'Reilly breathlessly calls it a "milestone in the history of the Internet," and says he's been waiting ten years for something like this.
Yahoo developer Jeremy Zawodny says "Yahoo Pipes is one of a very small set of completely amazing on-line data manipulation and data mashup environments that can really change the way we work with on-line data sources."
Google's Matt Cutts thinks it's "a really neat idea."
Six Apart's Anil Dash compares it to some other tools in the category
Niall Kennedy gives a review, and includes some potential implications for publishers.

We'll circle back once the brouhaha dies down, and the Pipes site is available, to let you know how this will affect you as a search marketer.

Posted by Kevin Newcomb at 9:41 AM | Permalink

August 28, 2006

Yahoo Removes Blog Search For Short Term

The blog community is buzzing over Yahoo removing blog search, including removing the Yahoo News integration of blog search or even accessing blog search at Yahoo. What is up? Why did Yahoo remove it? The only official quote I have seen was captured by Greg Jarboe at SEO PR, where he has a quote from Brian Nelson of Yahoo who told Greg that this is a temporary thing. In an email sent from Brian to Greg, Brian said that Blog search has "temporarily taken offline to retool the offering." Brian also adds that Yahoo "might be thinking bigger picture when it comes to blog content.”

So, don't panic, we know blog results have been removed from Yahoo News, we know you cannot access Yahoo Blog search, we know your blog search RSS feeds are not returning results - but now Yahoo has left itself open to hit the blog community with something huge.

Why didn't Yahoo say anything about this prior to pulling the plug? Why didn't they issue a "maintenance announcement" prior to removing Yahoo blog search? These are very good questions. I do not have the answer to them. But some speculate that Yahoo pulled blog search due to a "rampant splog problem."

Time will tell. But I would expect blog search back soon from Yahoo.

Posted by Barry Schwartz at 8:15 AM | Permalink

December 2, 2005

Yahoo Adds RSS Alerts Delivered via E-Mail, IM, or SMS

The other day Danny blogged about Yahoo adding an RSS viewing option to the beta version (that I like a lot) of Yahoo Mail. However, that was not all the new stuff Yahoo released the other day. In a blog post, Scott Gatz points out that via Yahoo's very robust Alert Service you can now have alerts for (for ANY RSS feed) delivered to you via e-mail, SMS (text messaging), and/or Yahoo Messenger. Very cool and for me, very useful, especially the SMS alerts.

I also use Yahoo's keyword-based news alerts delivered via all three services all the time and will soon be adding some RSS feeds to the mix. Gatz has a solid overview of thenew features, how they can be useful and some screen caps here. I've also posted a screen cap of some of the other alert services Yahoo offers here. They range from Amber Alerts for missing kids to air fare price changes to sports scores. Kudos to Yahoo on this RSS alert service.

Posted by Gary Price at 4:15 PM | Permalink

November 30, 2005

Yahoo Mail Beta Gains RSS Reading Feature

The new Yahoo Mail that's in beta has gained a new way to add RSS feeds into your mail folder. For me, it's nothing shocking. I already pull RSS feeds into Outlook folders and read them in exactly this way. But it's nice for those who want this feature in a web-based email system.

By default, if you click the Add button next to your All RSS Feeds folder, a window pops-up where you're offered to enter feeds from places like the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, News.com, Salon, Digital Photography Review and -- of course -- the Search Engine Watch Blog.

OK, I joke about that last one. We don't make that cut. But if you want us or anything not listed, you can paste the feed into the Address box at the bottom of the Add window.

What's very, very nice is that if you already have a My Yahoo account with feeds added, Yahoo Mail automatically lists those feeds within your All RSS Feeds folder. Great foresight on that, Yahoo!

Have multiple feeds? Each feed gets its own subfolder within the All RSS Feeds folder. You can click on a subfolder and read posts just for that feed.

Sadly, clicking on the main All RSS Feeds folder doesn't show you a view of everything, all feeds combined into one. That might just be a glitch for me, however. SiliconBeat says this type of "river of news" view should be working.

It's also too bad you can't do what NewsGator allows, create multiple folders and put feeds inside of those, to read subsets of feeds.

Someday I'll explain more how this works in more depth with NewsGator. But in short, I have a folder called Search:Hot where I have feeds from 10 or so different blogs that are places always on top of search news. If I'm in a hurry and want to see if anything new is going on, I hit that folder. Rather than important news on search perhaps being drowned out by other stuff, I get a concentrated yet combined view. When I have more time, I look at other folders that group feeds such as Search:Medium and Search:Cool. And non-search feeds that I take go into different folders.

The system works well for me. Obviously, it's not for everyone. But it would be nice to see Yahoo add this as the beta matures.

How about the ability to import all your feeds from another reader via OPML? My Yahoo has an old feature for this, which should in turn bring feeds into Yahoo Mail. But when I tried, it didn't work. Yahoo says it's an old import version and that a new one is promised soon.

Yahoo Mail?s full post RSS reader from Yahoo's Scott Gatz gives you some nice screenshots illustrating the service more, helpful for those not in the beta who can't play with it now.

While Scott calls the system a "full post" reader, remember that this is only true if the feed itself puts out the full post content. If the feed only carries summaries or partial posts, that's all you'll get. Scott and Yahoo Mail's Ethan Diamond are also interviewed on the new system over here at PodTech.

Want the new Yahoo Mail service now? It is pretty slick. My wife was a regular Yahoo Mail user and loved that, and she loves the new service even more. Scott kindly points to a form where you can ask to be included.

So where's the Add To Yahoo Mail button for feed publishers? None that I can see yet, and somewhat of a problem for Yahoo. They have the long-standing Add To My Yahoo button that many use. Will people who use the new Yahoo Mail understand that these buttons are a way to add to Yahoo Mail as well? Or will an entirely new user-friendly button for Yahoo Mail users have to come along. I'll check with Scott on this and postscript on Yahoo's plans.

Submitting RSS Feeds To Yahoo for Search Engine Watch members goes into more depth about getting your feeds into My Yahoo and in front of potential feed searchers, so check that out. Yahoo Feed Search & Web Search Feeds Update covers how searchers can seek and add content into My Yahoo itself, if you want some further assistance on that. Getting Add To & Subscribe Buttons For Feeds for Search Engine Watch members also runs down some popular Add To buttons that marketers may want to consider using to encourage subscriptions.

Postscript: Scott tells me...

Viewing the top-level All RSS Feeds folder should indeed show a compilation of all your feeds, so they're looking into why it doesn't work for me.
The OPML import feature I mentioned is an old version, which is why it probably wasn't working well. I've removed the link, because he promises a new improved OPML version that does work and better is to come.
The ability to group feeds into subfolders as I describe is on the top of the to do list.
For the time being, it remains a single Add to My Yahoo button for publishers to use to encourage subscriptions to both My Yahoo and Yahoo Mail -- but upgrades are coming to that.

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 9:38 AM | Permalink

November 21, 2005

Add To Google & Save To Yahoo My Web Buttons Out

Nick at Threadwatch discovers a new Add To Google button, while I'm also overdue to discuss the new Save To My Web button that Yahoo kindly rolled out last month. Let's jump in!

The new Add To Google button is easy to implement. Fill out the form at Google, then you get the appropriate HTML. Insert the button on your home page, then when people click, they are directed to add your feed to either their personalized edition of the Google homepage or Google Reader. Adding it to Google Sidebar, sadly, isn't a third option. That should be supported as well. Hopefully, we'll see it come.

As for the new Yahoo button, Yahoo announced it at the end of last month. In fact, I'd been asking them for one publicly, so they came back in that post and specifically called me out to say "Here it is!" But I was on vacation at the time, hence me playing catch-up!

It's very welcomed. My Web is the future of where search is heading at Yahoo, as A Search Marketer's Look At Yahoo My Web 2.0 covers in more depth. Getting your pages added and part of the trust networks that My Webbians are building over there is important. This button makes it easy to encourage that type of saving.

To get the button, there's no form to fill out. You just grab JavaScript code from here. That puts a little button on your site. When people push it, your page title will be grabbed, along with the URL and some suggested tags for saving the page under.

Nick at Threadwatch has gone a step further. He's used the code to make a link-text only version of the save to my web feature. He discusses it more here, and the code is here.

Why not just use the button? By using Nick's code, you can custom the text of the link, in case you want to give people more instructions. For example, look over in our left-hand navigation area. I've used both the button plus Nick's code underneath, altering it to stress that this is "Yahoo" My Web, something the button doesn't say.

Down the line, I want to move that type of code over to the bottom of posts, to help encourage people to save them. Having that as a textual link makes it a bit easier. And if you're going to do it for My Web, why not for bookmarking service Del.icio.us? That's easily done through this code spotted via Threadwatch.

Are all these buttons worthwhile? I still can't tell if they are driving that many sign-ups, but I've fallen into the "learn to love them" category. While having one unified sign-up system might be better, if having an Add To Google or Add To Yahoo button means I'm going to get some additional visitors who recognize what that means, I'm going for it.

Want to love buttons yourself? See Getting Add To & Subscribe Buttons For Feeds, which I've posted for Search Engine Watch members. It takes you to the forms for popular services, so that you can merrily make your own badges.

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 9:34 AM | Permalink

October 12, 2005

Yahoo Blog Search Gets RSS Feed

Yahoo dropped me a note to tell me one of my complaints about its new blog search service has been solved. You can get an RSS feed of blog matches now! In fact, it was supposed to be there from the start but just wasn't working right a launch, Yahoo says. OK, let's do the how to:

Do your search at Yahoo News for something -- say yahoo itself!
Go over to the right hand side of the page, find the Blogs box, and click on the More Blog Results link.
Look at the bottom of the page that comes up next, full of blog results. Find the Topic Tracker box. That will let you subscribe to the search in My Yahoo or you can use the orange XML box to get the RSS feed.

That's it. Thank you, Yahoo!

Postscript from Gary: On a related note, in my post about Yahoo's changes to News Search I added a bit about being able to search to only blog material from the outset. It basically involves appending your terms to a specific url. Postscript from Gary 2: Forget the messy url, see this post about a Yahoo "blog only" search box.

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 12:10 PM | Permalink

October 11, 2005

Thoughts On & Playing With Yahoo's Blog Search

I've been playing with Yahoo's new blog search that Chris wrote about earlier and wanted to share some of my thoughts, plus link to those of others. In summary, I like blog and news content being integrated, but I hope it will evolve into something even better. I also want a dedicated blog search service in addition to the integrated approach and find the lack of RSS support for blog search matches something that should be fixed quickly.

Like The Integration, But Want It Better

First, like Dave Winer, I love that Yahoo is integrating the blog content into the news content. As I wrote about Memeorandum's launch last month, tying blogs to mainstream news is a nice blend of news and opinion to me.

If you haven't seen Memeorandum, do check it out. It's been absolutely superb in getting news stories and blog commentary blended together in a compelling fashion. The only downside is that you only get a view for politics or tech stories.

That's where Yahoo goes a step beyond. Since you can keyword search for anything, you can get a pseudo-Memeorandum for any topic. Want blogs and news about ipod nano scratches? Here you go.

News & Blog Content Not So Clear Cut

Notice in that search that things aren't always clear cut, however. Engadget's Mossberg: iPod nano scratches like crazy story was both the top news story and the top blog story, when I looked. And Engadget's a blog, right? It shouldn't be in news! Well, not really to me. Engadget may publish using blog software, but it's essentially a news outlet. It makes sense to be in news search. But then again, it can make sense to be in blog search. The lines can be blurry.

Indeed, while Dave writes today that Google excludes blogs from its news search, that's not correct. Some blogs are also considered news sources to Google. Admittedly, not very many but some are. A search for nano ipod on Google News brings me back Engadget, just like at Yahoo. Looking for nano ipod scratches, I get this page from iLounge listed first, plenty bloggy in terms of having lots and lots of comments on it.

That's another reason why I like Memorandum. It's not trying to play the "is it a blog or is it news" game. Sometimes, a blog post is the lead item with news stories and other blog posts associated with it. Sometimes, a news item is the lead item with blog posts and news items pointing at that. In the fuzzy world of blogs versus news, it's a nice solution.

Maybe we'll see this type of Google News-like clustering happen to Yahoo News to better integrate blog content -- and perhaps the same will happen at Google News. That would be welcomed.

Bring On The Standalone Service

Another thing that would be welcomed would be a standalone blog search service. Want just blog search results? Right now, as Chris noted, after you do a news search, you can use the "More Blog results" link at the bottom of the Blogs pane to see all blog matches for your query. It shouldn't be that hard.

I agree with what Yahoo's Jeremy Zawodny wrote about the integration making blogs more visible to more people. But it's not an either/or situation. Yahoo Audio integrates podcasts, but the new Yahoo Podcasts service also stands alone. News content is in Yahoo Web Search already, but having Yahoo News allows for better, fresher presentation of that content. Blog content can be in Yahoo News and is welcomed there, but there's no reason it can't standalone in a dedicated service -- which in turn can offer things that Yahoo News cannot.

What's The Deal On Backlinks?

Backlinks are one of those things. Over at Google, not to mention Technorati and other places, getting backlinks to a particular post is easy. Yahoo's implementation is uncertain.

Here's Robert Scoble coming away trying to count links to a Channel 9 video of Bill Gates. Yahoo found nothing. But how did he look? Not using a link: command. He just entered the actual page URL, like this:

http://channel9.msdn.com/Showpost.aspx?postid=111598

So how do you find backlinks on Yahoo's blog search? The first thought is to do this on Yahoo News:

link:http://channel9.msdn.com/Showpost.aspx?postid=111598

Oops! That doesn't work. Over 2 million links come back, and you can see that they clearly aren't linking to that video. In fact, do a backlink search for anything, and it pretty much seems to bring back matches similar to as if you searched for link:http://.

But wait, let's try something else. Back to that link:http://channel9.msdn.com/Showpost.aspx?postid=111598 search, and this time, click on the More Blog results link. That brings back this, showing one match to the video.

Only one link isn't going to impress Robert, but at least we can see how link: does sort of work in blog search. Sort of. Overall, with some other queries I tried, it seems poorly supported and incomplete. But since many bloggers are seeking that type of data, it's something hopefully Yahoo will improve.

Then again, Yahoo has an entire Site Explorer service to generate this type of information, launched only about two weeks ago and that I cover more here, Yahoo Site Explorer Live: New Way To See All Your Pages, Links.

Want backlink data? It gives you plenty, finding nearly 900 links from blogs and other pages across the web to the page Robert is interested in. But unlike with, say, Google's blog search, you can't get the most recent links coming up. Again, that's a key bit of data bloggers are interested in.

Heck, a rundown on new links to anything is something anyone is interested in, as I've written before. Site Explorer would be better than Yahoo coming up with backlinks just from blogs, since it would give you a better picture of the entire web universe discussing you content. It just needs to be able to sort by date.

Again With The Better Integration!

Another comment on Robert's write-up. He was disappointed that Yahoo's blog search only brought up 2 matches about Chris Pirillo's new meta search service Gada.be. But in reality, he was counting only NEWS search results.

When I do the search he did, I get three matches in the main "News Stories" section. But over to the right-hand side, the Blog listings area shows me four matches and clicking through to see further, I get 15 matches in all.

From what I can tell, Robert just missed the results, just as Om Malik notes in his write-up on the integration searchers are "very likely" to miss the blog integration. Well, here's a major blogger -- Robert Scoble -- apparently doing just that. It underscores that integrating blog content into news search is fine, but if people like Robert are missing it, many more are likely to, as well.

Back to those 15 matches, none are Robert's own post on the service, which I know was widely cited. So while Yahoo's better than he thinks, it clearly has much more work to do. But Yahoo also acknowledges this in its own post on the launch, which will including going beyond just RSS feeds known to My Yahoo users (and indexing more than just feed content, as Technorati's Niall Kennedy seems to find).

Where's The RSS/Feed Support?

Let's hope part of that work is adding RSS support for queries. I know it's a beta, but with Yahoo's love of all things RSS, I was dumbfounded to find no way to get blog search matches sent to me via a feed.

To be clear, you can do a news search and get a feed for any query sent to you. In other words, if I want to monitor news about Yahoo, I just search for yahoo, then subscribe using the orange RSS/XML box at the bottom right-hand side of the page.

There's a page that explains more here and a big list of more Yahoo feeds here. Yahoo Gains RSS Feeds For Web Search & Discovering Auto-Discovery from me also covers how to get feeds for Yahoo web search and other types of searches.

How about a feed of blog search results? Nowhere to be found, as far as I can tell. Even if you click through to view only blog search results, there's no RSS icon nor any autodiscovery of a feed enabled. And from what I can see, subscribing to a news search result only brings back news matches despite the new blog integration. Overall, it's an omission that needs to be fixed quickly.

Want to comment or discuss? Visit our forum thread, Yahoo Mixes Blog Search With News Search.

Postscript: Yahoo's added RSS feeds for blog search. More here: Yahoo Blog Search Gets RSS Feed.

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 10:23 AM | Permalink

October 10, 2005

Yahoo Integrates News, Blogs & Flickr Search Results

Yahoo is testing a new approach to delivering news search results, combining traditional media sources with "citizen journalism" from blogs and images from its Flickr photo sharing site.

Although not the long-anticipated blog/feed search that we know is coming soon, Yahoo's blending of news and blog sources is a nice way to get perspectives on current events from both professional and amateur sources.

Run a search on Yahoo News and your results will include traditional news sources from the 6,500 media outlets Yahoo crawls, as always. On the right side of search results you'll also see a pane with blog search results. Click on the "all blog results" link at the bottom of this pane, and you'll see a page with additional blog search results, as well as a new pane displaying Flickr images that have been tagged with keywords relevant to your search terms.

Results are sorted by relevance, with an option to sort by date. You can also use the new "topic tracker" to add your query to My Yahoo, or click the xml button to add a feed for the search to an RSS aggregator.

Blog posts are drawn from those included in the My Yahoo feed directory, a collection in the "high hundreds of thousands" of blogs. Yahoo plans to expand this coverage to the millions of blogs that ping its blo.gs service, but gave no date for when this additional coverage would be rolled out. Yahoo also plans to launch a stand-alone blog/feed search service in the near future.

The integration of blogs and news in Yahoo news search results is well done, clearly separating professional news sources from blogs, but making it easy to get content from multiple sources. Yahoo says that it's an easy way to expose the 20 million plus monthly Yahoo news users to the world of the blogosphere.

If you publish a blog and would like to be included in blogs displayed in Yahoo News search results, see the Publisher's Guide to RSS which has instructions on submitting your RSS feed to Yahoo.

Posted by Chris Sherman at 10:00 PM | Permalink

Yahoo Blog Crawler Page Up For Site Owners -- Blog Search To Come

I posted last week about Yahoo saying that blog search was likely to come within days. Well, here's another sign that it will be soon. Steve Rubel notes a new page is up giving site owners info about Yahoo's blog crawler.

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 2:52 PM | Permalink

October 4, 2005

Yahoo Blog/Feed Search Coming

We had an unplanned glimpse of Yahoo's blog search in July, and now it looks like the service is going to formally emerge. Spotted via Steve Rubel, BusinessWeek cites Yahoo's Bradley Horowitz saying it might come as early as this week (or next week, depending on what you consider "next week" to be). Of course, Yahoo began offering blog search at Yahoo Korea back in August. Read Korean? Check out the service here. FYI, the glimpse of Yahoo "blog search" we had before was really for feed search. And Google's "blog search" is more accurately called Google Feed Search, as I explained here. Blogs aren't the same as feeds; feeds aren't the same as blogs!

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 1:06 PM | Permalink

September 22, 2005

Maps & Resources Tracking Hurricane Rita

As Hurricane Rita bears down on Texas, we're obviously hoping for the best. Some new resources for those who want to track the storm's progress are covered below, including very nice MSN Virtual Earth-powered and Google Maps-powered services.

Robert Scoble points to an MSN Virtual Earth-powered map produced by Poly9 for MSNBC. It shows where the storm has been and where it is projected to go, future points in lighter shades of white.

Hover over any future point for a bit more info on forecasted winds. Wondering how the track will impact Galveston? Hard to see on the map, because as a small town, Galveston's not shown unless you zoom in a bit. Basically, find Houston and come down at a 5 o'clock angle until you hit the coast -- or zoom in.

Sadly, if you visit either the actual MSN Virtual Earth site or MSNBC, you don't find any links to this map. How Robert found it, he doesn't say, but it should be a lot easier.

One plus to the exploring, however. MSNBC has another great Hurricane Tracker map that shows the past path and projected route, along with how the storm has grown in strength. Look to the left of the map, and you'll see links for past storms in 2004 and 2005, including Katrina.

Doc Searls points to Central Florida Hurricane Center 2005, or flhurricane.com. As the site says, this is not some official government site but a nice resource run by weather hobbyists.

They've got a Google Maps-based storm track you can follow -- where the storm has been, where it's expected to go, and info when you click on any of the pinned points along the way.

I think it's much nicer with the hybrid view switched on, and Galveston shows easily with only slight zooming. Also check out the legend that explains the storm strength as show with colored dots.

Steve Rubel notes you can now get weather feeds via Yahoo, by the way. I didn't think this was new, but they're adding so much, it's hard to keep track! A page with severe weather alerts is here, Texas here, but these are sent via email only. A Yahoo News feed for "Hurricanes & Topical Storms" is here -- and those who prefer to read online can see the Full Coverage area for hurricanes here.

Hurricane Rita Takes Aim at Texas Coast from Gary yesterday also notes some other news resources tracking Rita. Basically, pick your usual news source suspect, and they're going to be doing something.

FYI, I remarked to my wife when Ophelia came along how quickly we were going through the hurricane alphabet. What happens if we hit Z (or really W, the last letter actually used)? MSNBC writes we move to the Greek alphabet, along with nice background on how storms are named.

Postscript from Gary: More Maps.

From ESRI: A large collection of maps, imagery, and data for both Hurricane Rita and Hurricane Katrina
From Geodata.gov: Hurricane Rita Tracking Map
From the Harris County (Houston area) Office of Emergency Management: Real-time, interactive rainfall map.

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 7:35 AM | Permalink

August 3, 2005

Yahoo Korea Now Offering Blog Search

News.com reports that Yahoo has started to offer blog search on Yahoo Korea. No surprise that Yahoo has no comment as to when blog search will be coming to other Yahoo sites. However, I'm sure that between this story, recent comments by Jeremy Z., and Steve Rubel spotting an RSS search test site a few weeks ago, the guessing game about when Yahoo blog/rss search will launch outside of Korea will continue at a fever pitch.

Posted by Gary Price at 8:25 PM | Permalink

July 8, 2005

Yahoo's Blog & RSS Search Engine Outed

Yahoo said a blog and RSS search engine was something it was considering. Steve Rubel has come across what looks to be the test site. Well, it was the test site. I played with it for about two minutes, then found it had been taken down. See the screenshot over at Steve's blog.

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 1:02 PM | Permalink

June 1, 2005

Yahoo Adds News Headlines "Module" to Yahoo Mail Home Page

A few hours ago I noticed that my Yahoo Mail home page (the page visible after logging-in) now contains a "module" labeled "In the News." It offers headlines and direct links to five news stories. A pull down allows the user to see headlines for six news categories. I wouldn't be surprised to see other new "modules" (RSS feeds? Stock Prices? Local Weather?) in the near future. Here's a screen cap of what I'm seeing.

Yahoo made a similar "tweak" at the beginning of 2005 for My Yahoo users who utilize Yahoo's clutter-free and customizable search.yahoo.com homepage. The changes (still available) allow a My Yahoo user to see current news headlines, view the number of unread mail messages in their Yahoo Mail inbox, and review the current Dow Jones market average. All of these "modules" can be made visible/invisible with a quick click.

Posted by Gary Price at 1:46 PM | Permalink

May 31, 2005

Yahoo Feed Search & Web Search Feeds Update

Last September, my Yahoo, How About A Feed Search Tab? article wished for Yahoo to make it easier for people to find its feed search service. Similarly, I recently wished that Yahoo's new web search feeds were easier to find. Any plans for these things to change? Nothing immediate, says Yahoo, unfortunately.

Want to search for feeds at Yahoo? Here are the clunky instructions. Go to the Add Content page of My Yahoo! How about a proper home for this?

"Our focus has been primarily on making sure the search is seamless for My Yahoo users. But, we're hearing more people asking for this [a better location]. I think that's something we're going to look at pretty closely," said Scott Gatz, senior director, personalization product, at Yahoo.

And what about an enhanced feed search service, one that actually lets you search for matching posts from a feed, rather than just locate feeds generally based on their titles and descriptions (more on this is covered in the Submitting RSS Feeds To Yahoo story for Search Engine Watch members).

Gatz said work right now remains building tools to help people subscribe to, manage and integrate content into the Yahoo experience, rather than building out a dedicated feed/blog search service. But he left a at least a glimmer of hope.

"We're always listening, and as the consumer need grows, we'll be sure to get there."

Meanwhile, what about those web search feeds that are hard to find. The new Yahoo Publisher's Guide To RSS says of them:

Yahoo! Search ? lets you create an RSS feed for any set of search results. Also, web search results from RSS publishers (CNN.com for example) automatically display a link to the corresponding RSS URL.

However, that's only correct for those who have a newsreader enabled for auto-discovery, which Yahoo's own My Yahoo is not. My Yahoo Gains RSS Feeds For Web Search & Discovering Auto-Discovery article explains this more and provides a workaround if you can't use auto-discovery. But how about just adding a visible RSS feed link to the search results pages, in the way that MSN does and Yahoo does itself for news search feeds?

"When it came to the rest of the search RSS feeds, we wanted to start off simple for those folks with toolbars, Firefox and Safari. We wanted to get our feet wet with that and learn how they are using them before opening it. It way a way to soft launch and get it out there in front of people in the know," Gatz said.

So, a visible link is likely to come. But in the meantime, the soft launch continues. FYI, if you use the Yahoo Toolbar, it has auto-discovery built in, to send a feed to your My Yahoo page, Gatz said.

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 12:05 PM | Permalink

Submitting To Yahoo's Feed Search

Yahoo recently released a Publisher's Guide To RSS that formalizes some submission tips and procedures for feed owners. In Submitting RSS Feeds To Yahoo now out for Search Engine Watch members, I taking a closer look at how your RSS feed appears within Yahoo's feed search service. How are results sorted? Are you in the directory? How can you measure your feed popularity via Yahoo? Here's a summary for non-members.

Submitting an RSS feed to Yahoo is easy. Just use this page.
After submitting, your feed should be available to anyone who searches for feeds from within My Yahoo via the Add Content page.
Feeds are ranked based on the content of their titles, descriptions and Yahoo popularity data.
You can also submit to the human-compiled directory of feeds on the Add Content page, under the "Browse By Topic" heading. Use this form.
Yahoo's feed spider leaves behind popularity data for your feed, as Yahoo explains more here
Yahoo's Popular From the Web category shows you the top 100 popular feeds, according to Yahoo.
Yahoo recommends using only one flavor of feed, but while it prefers RSS 2.0 for its own needs, you can use any you like. It just hopes site owners will use one to help avoid possible duplication of content.

The Submitting RSS Feeds To Yahoo story goes into greater depth for SEW members on all of the points above.

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 12:00 PM | Permalink

May 20, 2005

New From Yahoo: Guide to RSS for Publishers

The new Yahoo Publisher's Guide to RSS will be especially useful as a one-stop shop for those just getting started with the format but can also serve as a worthwhile reference for experienced RSS types.

The site includes an intro to RSS, how to create feeds with several services (not just Yahoo 360), info about submitting and promoting your feed, a link to sign-up for alerts about new services from Yahoo (RSS advertising), and more.

Posted by Gary Price at 3:30 PM | Permalink

May 19, 2005

Yahoo Gains RSS Feeds For Web Search & Discovering Auto-Discovery

Yahoo is now the second major search engine to provide RSS feeds for web search, after MSN debuted them in January. RSS Feeds for Yahoo! Web, News, Image, and Video Searches from Yahoo's Jeremy Zawodny explains how they are available at Yahoo web search results plus news, image and video search.

Jeremy's also surprised no one's figured this out before, since they've apparently been offered for months. The answer is easy. They've only been made available through auto-discovery. That clearly doesn't work that well, given that no one's been auto-discovering these feeds.

With auto-discovery, a browser or news aggregator that's savvy will highlight to you that there's a web feed, making it easy to automatically add it to your reader. But plenty of readers aren't auto-discovery friendly -- such as Yahoo's own My Yahoo.

Want to add content to My Yahoo? Yahoo will let you search or browse for content through listings it has, but these search feeds won't show up in those. The alternative is to paste the URL of the feed into My Yahoo. But auto-discovery doesn't give you the feed URL, at least not easily.

Want that URL? Do your search, such as cars. Now view the source code for the page. Up near the top, you'll see this:

That's the auto-discovery information. The part highlighted in bold? That's the feed URL. Copy and paste that into My Yahoo or any aggregator that can't deal with auto-discovery.

If you use NewsGator like me, get familiar with the NewsGator Toolbar. I've completely ignored this, until now. Do the search you want to monitor. Then copy and paste the URL of the search results page, like this:

http://search.yahoo.com/search?p=cars&sm=Yahoo%21+Search&fr=FP-tab-web-t&toggle=1

By the way, I always prefer to shorten search URLs to the bare essentials. You don't have to, but here's what that looks like, if you do:

http://search.yahoo.com/search?p=cars

Next, select Subscriptions in the toolbar, then Add Feed, then paste in the URL. The feed URL on that page will be auto-discovered and added.

See how easy that is? Not. In contrast, at MSN search, you simply need to do a search, then select the feed link that shows up at the bottom of the page. That's simplicity. More on MSN feeds in these posts: MSN Search's RSS Feeds & MSN Search Fixes Country-Specific Feed Bug.

Aside from the Yahoo feeds above, Yahoo offers many other feeds. Gary mentioned this full list earlier: Yahoo RSS Feeds. Also see our past posts, Yahoo Shopping Gains RSS Feeds, Mobile Access to Your My Yahoo RSS Feeds and Yahoo Gains Financial Feeds; A Revisit To Yahoo News Feeds for more on feeds at Yahoo.

In all these other feeds, Yahoo makes life easy by putting the feed URL on the pages itself. That's what should happen with these new keyword search feeds, which I'm sure will come.

For more on discovering feeds, see my past post: More On Making Feed Discovery & Subscription Easier

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 7:31 AM | Permalink

May 14, 2005

A Compilation of Yahoo RSS Feeds

I just spotted this useful compilation of various Yahoo RSS feeds. The page contains either the actual RSS url(s) or links to pages with more RSS info. Feed categories include: + Ask Yahoo! + Yahoo Directory + Shopping + Yahoo Travels

Posted by Gary Price at 12:04 PM | Permalink

March 16, 2005

Yahoo 360 To Offer Photo Sharing, Social Networking & Blogging

Yahoo 360 is a new online photo sharing, social networking and blogging service that Yahoo is privately beta testing. Interested? You can sign-up via a waiting list link on the site. Well, you're supposed to be able to. That wasn't working when I tested it. Yahoo 360 takes spin through blogosphere from News.com has a few more details on the service. Charlene Li at Forrester has more in Yahoo! announces blogging and social networking betas. Via Steve Rubel, Yahoo 360 Fuses Social Networking and Blogs from the AP has details of a March 29 release date.

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 12:10 PM | Permalink

March 12, 2005

Mobile Access to Your My Yahoo RSS Feeds

As Danny pointed out the other day, mobile access to info and search services continue to be of interest to me. Services from new players as well as from established companies are appearing on a daily basis.

As this CMPNet Asia story points out, that the mobile version of My Yahoo now allows you to view your RSS feeds via your WAP browser. In other words, My Yahoo joins Bloglines from Ask Jeeves as services offering mobile tools to access your feeds. More info and details about how to access your feeds via My Yahoo Mobile in the story: Yahoo Launches Mobile RSS News Feed and in the Yahoo Search Blog post: My Yahoo! Mobile RSS.

Posted by Gary Price at 1:11 PM | Permalink

November 22, 2004

My Yahoo Upgrade Leaves Beta

Matt Hicks at eWeek reports that the My Yahoo beta that's been around for about two months has gone live.

Since launching the beta, Yahoo has doubled the number of searchable feeds to 300,000, [Scott] Gatz [Yahoo's Senior Director of Personlization Product] said. Users also can subscribe to any feed by entering its URL and by browsing a directory of feeds that Yahoo editors maintain. My Yahoo has about 20 million users, and Gatz said that millions chose to switch to the beta of the upgraded service. He declined to specify what proportion of users has made the switch. Also during the beta, Yahoo fixed a series of bugs and improved My Yahoo's Web compatibility with the Firefox 1.0 Web browser, Gatz said.

Posted by Gary Price at 5:50 PM | Permalink

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