October 7, 2009

This Breaking News Just In - The Meta Keywords Tag is Still Dead!

At SMX East this week, Cris Pierry, the Senior Director of Yahoo! Search, surprised everyone by saying that Yahoo! had stopped supporting the Meta Keywords Tag several months ago.

Google has never supported the Meta Keywords Tag and Bing doesn't support it, either.

So, I think I can safely say, "The Meta Keywords Tag is still dead."

Actually, the first to notice that it had died was Andrew Goodman of Traffick, who declared way back on my September 2, 2002, "An End to Metatags (Enough Already, Part 1)". He observed, "If somebody would just declare the end of the metatag era, full stop, it would make it easier on everyone."

On October 1, 2002, Danny Sullivan, provided a second opinion in Search Engine Watch in "Death of A Meta Tag." He declared, "In my opinion, the meta keywords tag is dead, dead, dead."

Nevertheless, Inktomi and then Yahoo! Search continued to support the meta keywords tag, so some search engine optimizers continued using it, although it didn't have significant impact.

Time passed, Sullivan left Search Engine Watch to start Search Engine Land and Search Marketing Expo, and way too many search engine optimizers continued using the Meta Keywords Tag because there's a big difference between mostly dead and all dead.

But, now Pierry has officially notified the next of kin.

So, I think the entire search industry can stop using the Meta Keywords Tag -- just as Chevy Chase has stopped saying, "This breaking news just in - Generalissimo Francisco Franco is still dead!"

I can't wait to tell the public relations agencies and PR departments that don't want to include keywords in their headline or lead paragraph. They mistakenly think that their newswire can automatically sprinkle Meta Keywords Tags over an unedited press release like pixie dust and magically optimize it for Google News or Yahoo! News.

I've long recommended using top search keywords in headlines and at least the first 100 words of optimized press releases. However, since Yahoo! News paid even minor attention to the Meta Keywords Tag, just as Yahoo! Search did, it was hard to get some to change their behavior.

Even those who realized that top search keywords actually need to appear high up in very visible locations, had trouble dealing with the death of the Meta Keywords Tag. They would go through the five stages of grief described in the book by Elizabeth Kubler-Ross, "On Death and Dying." They are: 1. Denial (This isn't happening to me!) 2. Anger (Why is this happening to me?) 3. Bargaining (I promise I'll be a better person if...) 4. Depression (I don't care anymore.) 5. Acceptance (I'm ready for whatever comes.)

But, now I can stay the meta keywords tag is dead, dead, dead.

And now, as a public service to those of our viewers who have difficulty with their hearing, I will repeat the top story of the day, aided by Senior Vice President of content for Search Engine Watch, ClickZ, and Search Engine Strategies, Mike Grehan.

Greg Jarboe: "Our top story tonight.."

Mike Grehan: [ screaming ] "Our top story tonight..!"

Greg Jarboe: "..The Meta Keywords Tag.."

Mike Grehan: [ screaming ] "..The Meta Keywords Tag..!"

Greg Jarboe: "..is still dead."

Mike Grehan: "..is still dead!"

Greg Jarboe: Good night, and have a pleasant tomorrow.

Mike Grehan: [ screaming ] Good night, and have a pleasant tomorrow!

Posted by Greg Jarboe at 4:15 PM | Permalink | Comments (9)

October 3, 2009

Social Media Press Release Blown Away in Hail of Bullets

This week, I saw an optimized press release blown away by Google News because it was mistaken for a social media press release. It fell under a hail of bullets, an innocent victim of a formatting decision. Before I share this tragic story, let me provide some background.

Two years ago, I asked, "Is the Social Media Press Release a Meatball Sundae?" I had just finished reading Seth Godin's book, Meatball Sundae: Is Your Marketing out of Sync?, which defined "meatball sundae" as "the unfortunate result of mixing two good ideas." And I answered my rhetorical question by accusing the "social media press release" alias "social media news release" alias "social media release" of being a meatball sundae.

I said the meatballs were the press releases, which should be optimized for news search engines, and the sundae toppings were the "Technorati tags, Digg buttons, del.icio.us bookmarks and other Web 2.0 features," which should be added to online stories and blog posts.

And I pointed out that adding Technorati tags to your social media press releases doesn't get them into Technorati, submitting social media news releases to social news sites like Digg was social media suicide, and using a jazzy new format that features bullet points and del.icio.us links wasn't going to make bloggers care about your content.

Six months later, I took a second look at the questions I'd raised in a blog post entitled, "Does Social Media 2.0 deserve a second life?" Instead of jumping to conclusions, I said the right approach to Social Media 2.0 was to test it, test it, and test it again.

Many of the new distribution options and PR measurement tools worked. But adding social media elements to press releases didn't. Blogs and other social media enable two-way conversation, but most press releases - even many of ones that use the social media format - are essays, not interviews; broadcasts, not conversations; lectures, not discussions.

One of the things that I didn't test back then was the suggested use of bulleted text in social media press releases, versus the narrative format of traditional press releases. Although I prefered the narrative approach, I figured that it was totally fine use bullets. I mistakenly figured that format isn't content, so it probably didn't matter.

Then, this week I drafted an optimized press release about an iPhone application for a client who shall remain nameless. As a courtesy, my client sent the draft to a third-party firm that had designed and developed the iPhone app. The final approved version came back -- with bullet points listing the key features.

Since it had already taken a month to get Apple's approval to even announce the new iPhone app, I didn't make a big deal about using a list of bullets in the optimized press release. Hey, I'm open minded.

But the next morning, I was shocked, shocked to find that Yahoo! News had indexed the optimized press release, but Google News hadn't. The optimized press release had top rankings for targeted keyword phrases in Yahoo! News, but I couldn't find it -- even when I typed the entire headline into the search box and hit the Search News button.

Now, Google News can be arbitrary, whimisical and capracious when it comes to crawling press release distribution services. For example, its automated system is currently best able to crawl headlines or anchor text links that have 22 words or less.

But, I already knew that. So, I talked with the technical gurus at my press release distribution servce. Then, I went looking to see if anyone else had encountered this phenomenon before, or if it was the result of a recent change to the Google News algorithim.

That's when found a post by Rebecca Corliss on HubSpot's Inbound Internet Marketing Blog entitled, "Study Shows Social Media Releases Are Less Effective than Traditional Press Releases." In May 2009, Corliss conducted a study comparing the results of social media releases and traditional releases by publishing them across five newswires.

As you can see in the graph to the left, the traditional release format performed much better.

And one of her findings jumped off the page. She said, "Don't use formatting. Many portal sites don't accept it. (For the technical folks, we're talking about XHTML.) Ditch the bullets, the itallics and bold type. It complicates the code and makes it more difficult for your release to be syndicated. "

Corliss added, "Use social media and multimedia elements in your PR strategy, not your press releases."

So, after conferring, conversing and otherwise hobnobbing with my fellow wizards, I decided that it was time to test the narrative format in a second press release versus the bulleted text in the first.

Now, I also made some edits to the headline -- changing "launches iPhone app" to "iPhone app launched by" -- and I revised the subhead and lead paragraph. But, these were just to put a fresh look on the announcement for Yahoo! News users.

The most significant change that I made was to rewrite the bulleted text into the narrative format.

Two days later, I submitted the second press release -- selecting the same news release distribution package -- and found that both Google News and Yahoo! News had indexed it. Oh, and it had top rankings for targeted keyword phrases in both news search engines. So, press release optimization still works.

But, what's the net-net? The excessive use of bullets can kill press releases. The Associate Press doesn't use them -- even for AP News in Brief. And according to Newsknife, the Associated Press was the No. 1 source in Google News for September 2009 as well as for the year to October.

So, write your next press release the same way that AP writes its online stories. Oh, and this isn't some dyed-in-the-wool defense of traditional journalism. Check out the number of YouTube videos from The Associated Press that appear in Google News.

Back on June 28, 2009, the YouTube Biz Blog invited any professional news outlet that is already included as one of the 25,000+ sources in Google News to become an official partner on YouTube and more easily share your news videos on both YouTube and Google News.

So, I'm all for innovation -- as long as it works.

Posted by Greg Jarboe at 2:10 PM | Permalink | Comments (7)

September 14, 2007

Yahoo Acquires News Aggregator BuzzTracker

Yahoo has acquired BuzzTracker, a news aggregator combining editorial judgment and algorithms taking into account how many times the story was blogged, and how recently.

BuzzTracker founder Alan Warms joins Yahoo as the general manager of News, along with his team. He is tasked with using the BuzzTracker technology to help improve the breadth and relevancy of Yahoo News content,regardless of the source.

"The decision to sell the business and move to Yahoo! was relatively simple. As anyone playing in the online space understands, online media is all about scale. The ability to garner real CPMs, the ability to sell ads directly, the ability to provide innovative solutions to advertisers, all depend on having tens of millions of unique visitors," Warms wrote on his Participate Media blog.

Posted by Kevin Newcomb at 3:58 PM | Permalink

August 5, 2007

Yahoo To Air Presidential Debate

Yahoo announced it will host an online only Presidential debate Sept. 12 with PBS's Charlie Rose as the host, the UK Register reported.

People will be able to submit video questions similar to those used on YouTube and CNN recently. This debate will only be broadcast online.

Posted by Frank Watson at 8:06 AM | Permalink

April 26, 2007

Images and videos appear at top of Yahoo News results

Over the past two days, images and videos have started to appear at the top of results pages for relevant queries on Yahoo News. For example, do a search for news video, and here's what you see:

Posted by Greg Jarboe at 1:54 PM | Permalink

April 20, 2007

Addressing the Rights Holders

At the recent SIIA (Software & Information Industry Association) conference, many traditional publishers heard Yahoo! appeal directly to their interests. Yahoo's Scott Moore explained that more than 80-90% of their content comes from licensing. He touted visitor access to great branded content, and the benefits for publishers.

While Moore was aiming to please, there's no mistaking that Yahoo competes with publishers. Yahoo's top priority is to improve site engagement, by encouraging visitors to stick around before heading to publisher sites and resources. Yahoo can draw on some of its own editorial and user-generated functionality too.

By contrast, these SIIA publishers are off-line powerhouses who often struggle to attract their own site visitors. They have cut licensing deals with Yahoo (and others) to expose their content elsewhere, via these portals.

Yahoo's success with social tools creates a wider gap that's not going to close soon. John Blossom stated this best: “The ability to aggregate both content and communities gives [Yahoo] a powerful edge over most traditional media brands.”

Since Yahoo! has long-standing deals with many SIIA-member companies, Moore seemed to know a lot of people he addressed. Thus I'm not sure why he spent time touting Yahoo's content and capabilities, in a way that was making publishers green with envy. Is this how you treat your friends?

Posted by at 3:24 AM | Permalink

April 19, 2007

Virginia Tech news story increases traffic to Yahoo News

Hitwise has released some new data about online traffic figures surrounding the Virginia Tech news story. Traffic to Yahoo News increased 62% on Monday, April 16, versus traffic on Sunday, April 15. By comparison, online traffic to Google News increased only 6% over the same period.

* Online traffic to the Virginia Tech Facebook website increased 555% on Monday, April 16 versus traffic on Sunday, April 15. Compared to the previous Monday, April 9, traffic was up 407%. * Online traffic to News and Media websites increased 16% on Monday, April 16 versus traffic on Sunday, April 15. Compared to the previous Monday, April 9, traffic was up 27%. * Yahoo News was the most visited News and Media website on April 16 receiving 8.69% of all visits to the Hitwise News and Media category. * The TV Network websites saw big gains as well - ABCNews.com visits increased 245%, MSNBC.com increased 161%, and FOXNews.com increased 64% and CNN.com increased 59%.

Posted by Greg Jarboe at 8:27 AM | Permalink

April 16, 2007

PR.com adds Yahoo News to press release distribution

PR.com has announced several upgrades and enhancements to its press release distribution service. This includes distribution to Yahoo News, social bookmarking, enhanced distribution via industry regional distribution channels, file attachments, and a PDF version of the press release.

While other press release distribution services offer similar features, the pricing for PR.com ranges from free to $199 a year for its high visibility option and $499 a year for its maximum visibility option.

Here are some of the enhancements and upgrades now available at PR.com:

? Yahoo News PR.com already distributed press releases to Google News, Topix.com, and other smaller news search engines. Now, it has added Yahoo News, the #1 visited news site, for those selecting the enhanced visibility level for their release.

? Social Bookmarking PR.com now provides the ability for people to add a press release to social bookmarking sites, such as Digg and Del.icio.us. While the Digg community rarely promotes press releases and tends to bury them, most of the other press release distribution services offer this feature. So, PR.com has jumped on the bandwagon.

? Industry Distribution Channels and Regional Distribution Channels By default, each press release is distributed globally. However, for those seeking industry focused news, each press release may now be additionally distributed to “Industry Distribution Channels” selected for the release. And, for those seeking relevant local news, each press release may now be additionally distributed to “Regional Distribution Channels” selected for the release. Of course, if you really want to reach targeted online media, there's no substitute for pitching them personally by email or phone. No online press release distribution newswire can replace the art of the schmooze.

? File Attachments You can now attach .gif, .jpg, .pdf, audio or video files, or Word documents to a press release. Again, other press release distribution services offer this feature -- but, generally, at higher prices.

? PDF Version of the Press Release A PDF version of the press release is automatically generated and made available for use for readers to download. While this creates duplicate content for the regular search engines, some people who want to forward an press release to others like this option.

Posted by Greg Jarboe at 12:51 PM | Permalink

March 28, 2007

Yahoo News Partners With Major Newspaper Publisher

The McClatchy Company, third largest newspaper publisher in the United States, will provide International news for the Yahoo News platform.

The companies issued a press release today explaining the newly formed partnership.

The release stated:

Yahoo! News and The McClatchy Company (NYSE:MNI) announced today that they will team up to offer international news coverage from a range of international geographic regions on Yahoo! News. The project, to be called "Trusted Voices," will offer in-depth perspectives and coverage from McClatchy foreign correspondents based in select regions, including Iraq, the Middle East, China and Latin America. The coverage will include traditional news stories from McClatchy newspapers and will further tap the regional expertise of the correspondents through exclusive blog reports designed to guide readers in understanding the news from these regions.

"The daily blog contributions from the international correspondents, combined with their traditional news reports, will offer our readers an on-the-ground perspective unavailable from traditional news outlets," said Scott Moore, head of news and information, Yahoo! "World News is among the most popular categories on Yahoo! News, and partnering with The McClatchy Company will significantly expand Yahoo!'s coverage of the world's most important regions."

"Trusted Voices" is expected to launch early in the second quarter of 2007, and the scope of the program will be expanded on the basis of early experience. One of the program's first initiatives will be the "Inside Iraq" blog written by native Iraqi staffers based in the McClatchy Baghdad bureau, which has been operating continuously since the U.S. invasion in 2003. McClatchy journalists based there and elsewhere in the region, such as Cairo and Jerusalem, also will contribute stories and blog posts and will advise Yahoo! readers about finding other sources for additional perspectives.

"This project marries Yahoo!'s enormous range of coverage and unmatched audience with unique 'Trusted Voices' from McClatchy who can supply almost personalized guidance for those readers who are searching for more," said Howard Weaver, McClatchy vice president, news.

About McClatchy

The McClatchy Company is the third-largest newspaper company in the United States, with 31 daily newspapers and approximately 50 nondailies. McClatchy-owned newspapers include The Miami Herald, The Sacramento Bee, the Fort Worth Star-Telegram, The Kansas City Star, The Charlotte Observer, and The (Raleigh) News & Observer. In addition, McClatchy has a robust network of internet assets, including leading local websites in each of its daily newspaper markets, offering users information, comprehensive news, advertising, e-commerce and other services. The company also owns and operates McClatchy Interactive, an interactive operation that provides websites with content, publishing tools and software development; Real Cities the largest national advertising network of local news websites, including more than 140 newspaper websites; and 15 percent of CareerBuilder, the nation's largest online job site. McClatchy also owns 25.6 percent of Classified Ventures, a newspaper industry partnership that offers classified websites such as cars.com and apartments.com. McClatchy is listed on the New York Stock Exchange under the symbol MNI.

About Yahoo! News

Yahoo! News (http://news.yahoo.com) is the largest news site on the web. Offering consumers news from dozens of news outlets, and a News Search tool that searches more than 8,000 news sources, Yahoo! News is a leading platform for breaking news, offering up-to-the-minute access to every important story happening. Yahoo! News is part of the globally branded Yahoo! network that reaches hundreds of millions of unique visitors each month.

Posted by Frank Watson at 12:46 PM | Permalink

February 22, 2007

Yahoo! Sings The News - Will Investors Sing the Blues

Singing newscasters? Why not just buy the Naked News - or is that next?

Is something wrong at Yahoo! ? Have the patients taken over the asylum?

There have been so many changes and moves going on at Yahoo lately that you need a dance card to keep track.

Okay every company restructures - and Yahoo has done that a couple of times recently (thanks to whoever leaked the memo giving a better idea of what motivated things over the past couple of months).

Staff are being juggled, people are leaving - okay.

Yahoo is pushing search into a corner - well in the case of International (for now) it is being combined with the media sales division (sort of like how MSN has been doing it).

In China they are moving to a business search engine - so niched search seems to be getting tested. If it succeeds in Asia watch for Europe and then the US to follow suit. Hey it is about being profitable, right.... leave the egos at the door and don't screw with the stock price!

Adapting the popularity and future potential of social networking, Yahoo has started some creative niched social portals. The Pontiac users group is an interesting case study (I have an article to write about this and will post it soon). The concept is a solid one that employs many of the Web 2.0 elements.

The stock price has been up and down lately - so I think investors would love to see a little unity and direction.

Hey maybe the crooner can sign the stock prices - at least that way they sound better!!!

Posted by Frank Watson at 12:17 PM | Permalink

February 19, 2007

Google News isn't top dog in UK news search, either

Last week, my article, “Is Google News the Tail Wagging the News Search Dog?,” appeared in Search Engine Watch – just as Search Engine Strategies was getting underway in London. The article cited data showing that Yahoo News and AOL News have larger unique audiences than Google News – in the US. So, what's the story in the UK?

According to comScore Media Metrix, there were 17.3 million unique visitors to General News sites in the UK during December 2006. The #1 site in the category was BBC News, with 7.8 million unique visitors. Yahoo News was #2, with 3.6 million unique visitors. Google News had 2.7 million, The Sun Online had 2.6 million, Guardian.co.uk had 2.5 million, MSN News had 2.4 million, AOL News had 1.9 million, and Times Online had 1.9 million.

UK data from Nielsen//NetRatings provides a similar picture. BBC News ranked #1 in the Online Current Events and Global News Destinations category during December 2006, with 6.2 million unique visitors. Yahoo News was #2 with 2.6 million unique visitors. Guardian Unlimited had 2.1 million unique visitors, Times Online had 1.6 million, The Sun had 1.5 million, Google News had 1.3 million, MSN News & Weather had 1.1 million, and AOL News had 1.0 million.

When I showed this data to people in London last week, many said they were shocked by two findings.

The first was that Yahoo News, not Google News, was the top dog in UK news search.

On the other hand, very few of the people who I talked with in London seemed interested in the strong showing of MSN News or AOL News – or the fact that four of the top eight news sites are news search engines. Most of them appeared to be more concerned about who was on top.

The second shocker was the appearance of The Sun, one of Britain's “red top” tabloids, in the rankings.

Unlike the “quality” newspaper sites in the UK, the red tops feature photos of scantily clad women on Page 3 and sensational stories like the one reporting that “Brit boobs are biggest.” And, going down-market now appears to be as popular a way of building an online audience as developing distinctive journalism that readers cannot find elsewhere.

Meanwhile, very few of the people who saw these findings seemed even remotely interested to hear that the BBC News is optimizing its headlines for news search engines. Most of the “lads” wanted to turn back to The Sun and re-examine Page 3.

Posted by Greg Jarboe at 1:48 PM | Permalink

January 18, 2007

Belgian editors go after Yahoo News

According to a story by AFP, Belgium's French-speaking newspapers are seeking redress from Yahoo News -- after taking action against Google News a year ago. The editors group, Copiepresse, accuses Yahoo of violating copyright laws.

Posted by Greg Jarboe at 3:48 PM | Permalink

January 8, 2007

CNN.com to offer comprehensive on-site news search

Shankar Gupta of OnlineMediaDaily reports that CNN.com has selected Inform Technologies to provide an on-site news search engine that "allows users to search other news sources without leaving the CNN site."

Launched in July 2006, Inform's publisher service allows news sites to offer their users comprehensive on-site news search, in the hopes of discouraging Web users from leaving sites to visit news search engines like Google News and Yahoo! News. The service also allows publishers to build special areas on their sites focused on specific topics or keywords.

Posted by Greg Jarboe at 8:58 AM | Permalink

December 29, 2006

Yahoo! Drops News Message Boards

Yahoo announced they are dropping the message boards for their news vertical. They have announced they will be introducing new features in the near future.

Posted by Frank Watson at 11:29 PM | Permalink

December 19, 2006

Top news searches differ from top web searches

When is a search term not a search term? That's a question worth asking after looking at a year's worth of search results on Google, Yahoo and AOL.

Google has just released its 2006 Year-End Google Zeitgeist. To compile its year-end lists and graphs, Google reviewed a variety of the most popular search terms that people typed into its news search engine as well as its web search engine.

Here are the top searches in 2006 on Google News:

1. paris Hilton 2. orlando bloom 3. cancer 4. podcasting 5. hurricane katrina 6. bankruptcy 7. martina hingis 8. autism 9. 2006 nfl draft 10. celebrity big brother 2006

Now, compare the list above with the one below for the top searches in 2006 on Google:

1. bebo 2. myspace 3. world cup 4. metacafe 5. radioblog 6. wikipedia 7. video 8. rebelde 9. mininova 10. wiki

To state the obvious: The top news search terms are completely different from the top web search terms.

If you go to Yahoo's Top Searches of 2006, you will also see some striking differences between Yahoo's Top 10 Searched News Stories of 2006 and Yahoo's list of the most popular web search terms this year.

The tragic passing of Steve Irwin and the mysterious death of Daniel Smith rank as this year's top searched news stories. Interest in the Middle East also dominated the top rankings in 2006, with conflict in Iraq, the Israel Lebanon conflict and the Saddam Hussein trial all ranking well.

Here's Yahoo's list of top news search terms for 2006: 1. Steve Irwin death 2. Anna Nicole's son dies 3. Iraq 4. Israel and Lebanon 5. U.S. elections 6. Fidel Castro stroke 7. North Korea Nuke 8. Jonbenet confession 9. Saddam Hussein trial 10. Danish Cartoon

In other words, it appears that one group of people is turning to Yahoo News Search for hard-hitting information.

Meanwhile, on another part of the portal, Britney Spears topped Yahoo's list of most popular web search terms in 2006 – for the fifth time in six years. The rest of the search engine's overall top 10 searches for the year were dominated by the under 30 celebrity set making a mark on pop culture.

Here's Yahoo's list of top 10 web search terms for 2006: 1. Britney Spears 2. WWE 3. Shakira 4. Jessica Simpson 5. Paris Hilton 6. American Idol 7. Beyonce Knowles 8. Chris Brown 9. Pamela Anderson 10. Lindsay Lohan

In other words, it appears that an entirely different group of people is turning to Yahoo Web Search for celebrity happenings and scandals – or the same group of people is conducting news searches in the office by day and different set of web searches at home by night.

If you go to AOL's 2006 Year End Hot Searches, you'll discover that it, too, appears to have a split personality.

The top 10 news topics at AOL News for 2006 were: 1. Gas prices 2. Steve Irwin 3. Immigration 4. Bird flu 5. Iraq 6. Natalee Holloway 7. Debra Lafave 8. Rush Limbaugh 9. Lebanon 10. Hurricane Katrina In other words, the group of people using AOL News seems interested in “hard news.”

Contrast that with AOL's list of the top 10 web search terms for the year: 1. Weather 2. Dictionary 3. Dogs 4. American Idol 5. Maps 6. Cars 7. Games 8. Tattoo 9. Horoscopes 10. Lyrics

In other words, the group of people using AOL Search seems to be looking for general interest information.

So, why do top news search terms differ so often from top web search terms?

One possible explanation might be demographics and/or psychographics. The smaller group of people using news search may differ demographically and/or psychographically from the larger group of people using web search.

And, who knows, perhaps a higher percentage of news search engine users are older, richer, better educated, and more experienced search users with children and homes in suburbs. Or, maybe web search engine users have different lifestyles, behaviors, interests and values. We can't say.

Why? Because there's another possible explanation: Situational intent. Each of us often acts differently in different situations.

A new eye-tracking study from Enquiro found that “intent impacts searching.” For research-related queries, we tend to “thin slice” sponsored content out of the way. But, for purchase-related queries, we tend to focus more on sponsored content.

So, maybe most of us use web search engines to look for one type of information and we use news search engines to look for another.

While it may not be clear yet why top news search terms often differ from top web search terms, one thing is perfectly clear. They are often different.

So, using web search term research tools like Wordtracker, Keyword Discovery, Yahoo's Keyword Selector Tool, or the Google AdWords Keyword Tool to identify potential web search terms makes a lot of sense. But, if you are trying to optimize a news story or press release, then using these same tools to identify potential news search terms may often produce mixed results.

If you are looking for news search terms, you might get better results using Google Trends, Google Suggest for Google News, the Yahoo News “also try” feature, or Keyword Discovery's news keywords database. But, don't be surprised if their news search term suggestions often seem surprising.

The most popular news search terms are often different from the most popular web search terms. That's a fact you can take to the bank – even if we can't explain why this is true just yet.

Posted by Greg Jarboe at 10:52 AM | Permalink

December 13, 2006

ABC News to be Yahoo News' top video content partner

According to Carly Mayberry of The Hollywood Reporter, ABC News will become the premiere video content partner of Yahoo News through an expansion of their current deal.

Under the new agreement, which is expected to be announced today, ABC News will double the amount of content it contributes to Yahoo News, including clips of breaking news stories as well as additional features and interviews like video segments from "Good Morning America" and "20/20."

The deal extends the current relationship between ABC News and Yahoo News, which began in September 2005. The new deal will showcase ABC News video more prominently throughout Yahoo News -- including on its front page, within other special sections on the site, and on relevant story pages.

According to Nielsen//NetRatings data for the week ending Nov. 26, Yahoo News is the most popular news site on the Internet, averaging 10.3 million unique visitors.

Posted by Greg Jarboe at 1:03 PM | Permalink

November 8, 2006

In The Election Results Race, Yahoo's The Winner

Like many Americans, I wanted to know what was up with the vote in the US midterm elections this morning. As a search analyst, I then wanted to know how the search engines performed in helping me find out. The results are in! Yahoo's the winner by far, but I'd still take the New York Times over it. Come along for an illustrated tour.

Google told us last month that Google Earth was all geared up to be an election guide. That's great if you've downloaded Google Earth and wanted to learn more before the election. But how about a quick, fast summary of what happened yesterday? What's Google got for us?

The Google home page is as minimal as always, no help there -- not even a special logo as in the 2004 race.

How about a search for "election results," which I think is a fair query to try. After all, using Google Trends, I can see a huge spike for that term after the last elections in the US:

I also checked the volume for just "results," and that was even higher whereas "elections" was much lower (see them all compared here). So my two queries for this test were "election results" and "results." On Google, both disappointed.

Here are election results on Google:

CNN's top with 2004 results! I know -- web search is always behind the times. That's why Google inserts that big news results OneBox unit above the regular results. Let's click on the main news link there, which takes us to news results:

Pretty bad. News about the dollar, stock prices -- but who won?!!! I've got to really work to figure this out, especially compared to the New York Times, as I'll show at the end of this story.

Maybe I head to the actual Google News home page:

Nope. I get some headlines telling me about the Democratic house victory, but it could be much better.

FYI, checking on a search for just results, I don't even get the news headlines inserted. Overall, I found Google to be a pretty poor resource.

How about Yahoo? The home page there immediately gives you some news:

If I actually gravitate to the picture and resist the pull of the search box, the "Full elections coverage" link takes me to a Full Coverage page with lots of info, including an interactive results page (my link takes that out of the normal pop-up box, but it still works great):

This is very, very nice. I can see at a glance who is ahead in the race for control of the US House Of Representatives, plus with a click I can check out the Senate or governor races. Selecting any state also gives me the information about races with that state.

I love this. It very similar to what impressed me at the New York Times. I hope Yahoo searchers found it. However, I suspect many bypassed it. To understand why, let's do that search for election results:

Similar to Google, Yahoo inserts a big "News Results" shortcut unit above the regular results, to help detour searchers into the freshest results. Of course, searcers might bypass that. If so, unlike Google, Yahoo has managed to get the CNN 2006 results page up rather than the CNN 2004 page. Nice. After that, there's Fox News 2006. But c'mon -- Yahoo's own special election results are third. This is one case where I'd totally applaud a little hand manipulation to get that to the top, especially to highlight that interactive results summary page.

Still, the web search results for this particular day at Yahoo far outshine Google. That's almost certainly due to some human editing, which is fine. Along with the sites I've mentioned, you get the New York Times politics page, USA Today's politics page, C-SPAN's 2006 results page, the ABC News politics page, CBS News's 2006 page, politics from the LA Times, then the Washington Post's 2006 results page. All of these are excellent choices. If Yahoo did human intervention to make this happen, kudos to them. You can check out a snapshot of the entire page here.

Over at Google, nothing is either timely or general enough. The Virginia state election board, California election info, assorted things dating from 2004 -- then oddly Virginia and California get another bump for their 2006 pages. Ugh. See the entire list in the snapshot here.

What happens if we detour into the news area that Yahoo promotes at the top of the page? Disappointment:

Yes, relevant news stories. And the image results to the side are kind of fun. But some hand help could have made a difference. How about a promo for that awesome election map of Yahoo's?

Let's go over to Ask, where I had high hopes. Ask has made a big deal of its special Smart Answers for the election, and they are cool. But will I see them? Yes, if I search for election:

I'd also get to this box if I went to the Ask home page and clicked on the Election Day link there:

But for election results (what I believe to be the more popular query), all I get is a small news unit:

The news unit will take me over to some news results, but like Yahoo's, these aren't thrilling. It's pick and choose through what you want, rather than any type of easy overview. As for a search on just results, that doesn't even bring back the news unit at all.

The overall web search results, similar to Google, are underwhelming. Nothing really helpful for the 2006 results pops up (see the full results in the snapshot here).

Even the special Smart Answers box, had it shown up, isn't that helpful for what I want now -- RESULTS! None of the featured links with it takes me to results.

Microsoft, what have you got for me at Windows Live Search? On the home page, nothing. For search on election results, it's disappointing old or non-targeted results (screenshot here). Unlike the others, there are no news results inserted above these. A search for just results is no better. If I specifically try a news search for election results, as with the others, there's no attempt to get me a comprehensive overview. It's up to me to review each story and hope for a good match.

Ironically, at the largely overshadowed MSN site, similar to Yahoo, I get a big election photo on the home page along with links, including one called "state-by-state results" that leads to MSNBC here. And over there is a pretty neat "Democracy Dashboard" giving me that type of overview I wanted:

It's a pity Windows Live didn't reach out to either MSN or MSNBC and do something special to point to this or somehow integrate it into the results.

What about AOL? From the home page, it's pretty easy to spot a link to a AOL election page with results for the House, Senate and more:

Searching for election results brings back disappointing Google listings in the main results. However, the new FullView column does a good job of dividing news into elections overall, US Senate coverage, US House coverage and more. And clicking on any of the "View all" links brings up the special AOL election page (see the full page here).

Now to the New York Times. I headed over there pretty much by chance. There are any number of newspapers I might of thought of off the top of my head, and usually its my original home town paper of the Los Angeles Times. But I hit the NY Times today, and boy was I glad.

Right on the home page, above the "fold" is an easy-to-spot election map. In seconds, it organized the most important information I was looking for into a way for me to know what was going on:

Drilling into the full map was even better. There, I could click on any state -- in particular the undecided ones -- and see the current situation:

Just when I was thinking "what if," I saw the "Create Outcomes" tab where I could click on a state and flip it to the Democrats or the Republicans to see how it might go with the Senate. Outstanding!

Other newspapers or web sites might have done as well with similar displays. If so, my apologies that this wasn't a review of the best election results sites. Instead, it was really meant to see how well the search engines held up as information resources for this particular news event.

Overall, I've written many times before that there's a role humans can play in search results. Today -- this was a perfect example of that. Yahoo almost certainly put some human effort into crafting results, and it was the clear victor in terms of quality of what was coming up in web search listings. AOL comes in second, again where human effort has helped its FullView listings help make up for the poor crawler-based results from Google.

In third, I put Google and Ask. Google's results were poor, but at least it floated some news results that may have helped. Ask, I was rooting for. But that Smart Answers box simply wasn't showing up for the queries I thought people were doing. Even if people were getting it for "election," it wasn't helpful to get election results. I really appreciate the effort, and if this had been for something other than actual results, Ask would have been great. In last place -- Windows Live.

This campaign of sorts is also one of those classic "what if" races. With just a little more effort, Yahoo would have had a landslide victory by getting people to its great overview page. The same is true for AOL. Ask, with just a bit more thought, could have had that box coming up for "election results" rather than just "elections" and added some links to get people to actual results. Windows Live, if it had remembered its MSN origins, might not be in last. And Google? A company that's all about organizing information might not have put in such a poor performance if it used some human power in the way the New York Times did.

Postscript: See also Case Study: Digg Versus Google News Traffic from me on my personal blog that covers how this article ultimately brought in lots of traffic from Google News from those unable to find election results there, along with lots of other data and a comparison to traffic from a top story at Digg on the same day.

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 4:17 AM | Permalink

October 16, 2006

CBS News Partnering With Yahoo; CBS News Stories In Google Earth

Yahoo adds CBS news to video lineup from the Associated Press covers how Yahoo News will be getting CBS News video clips from 14 local markets in the US to post to Yahoo News. Meanwhile, CBS Puts News on the Map Inside Google Earth from Micro Persuasion covers how CBS has a special feed (background here) that will plot CBS News stories within Google Earth. CBS appears to have been doing this since at least August, so it's not new nor requiring a specific partnership to do, as with the Yahoo program.

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 11:12 AM | Permalink

March 22, 2006

A Deeper Look At Personalized News Search Engines

Mark Glaser at MediaShift wrote a great review named Your Guide to Personalized News Sites. He reviews the history of personalized news sites, and discusses many of the new free options people have to search news with a personal touch. Here is a listing of some of the engines he reviewed;

Posted by Barry Schwartz at 9:31 AM | Permalink

March 20, 2006

Yahoo Launches Local News Beta

Search Engine Journal reports that Yahoo News has launched a local beta version. For example, you can go to news.yahoo.com/local/New+York to check out local news in New York. I do not currently see an RSS feed for local news results. There is a link to "Suggest a Local News Source" that takes you here. I am a big fan of Yahoo's local efforts, especially at local.yahoo.com but these local news headlines can be done better, in my opinion. Postscript From Danny: Want to see all the local news available? Visit the Yahoo Local News home page here. You should see a map of the US with a drop down option to choose a state, then a local news area. Don't panic if that page then suddenly refreshes to automatically take you to a particular area. If that happens, look in the lower right-hand side of the page. You'll see a "Browse More Local News" area with the map and the drop-down box.

Posted by Barry Schwartz at 10:24 AM | Permalink

February 2, 2006

Yahoo News Not Competing With Content Owners; Personalization, Better Recommendations May Come

Greg Linden points to the Budde Outlines Yahoo News Future article at MediaPost, where Yahoo News general manager Neil Budde reassures content owners that Yahoo News doesn't want to compete with them with its own original news content. Um, then why does Yahoo have it at all? Budde says Yahoo's own content will only be in areas underreported by the mainstream media. He also covers plans to create personalized news pages and the possibility of a better recommendation service, perhaps more Digg like in nature.

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 1:17 PM | 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

June 13, 2005

Yahoo News Beats Google News In Jackson Verdict

The fact that Google News uses automation to decide what to feature on its home page versus Yahoo employing human editors is often raised as a issue when comparing the services. In the case of the Michael Jackson trial, it looks like the humans won out. I've been watching both this afternoon to see how they responded to the not guilty verdicts in the case. All times listed are Eastern Daylight Savings Time.

Approximately 3:50pm, Word Breaks that Verdict will be Read
Approximately 4:00pm, Top Story at Yahoo News
Approximately 4:27pm, Top Story at Google News

Note: The MJ story was listed at the top of Google News "Entertainment" section several minutes before being listed as a Top Story. Then, it was listed as only a headline in "Top Stories" before moving to one of the two top two stories (posted with image) on the left side of the "Top Stories" section.

Approximately 5:14pm, Verdicts Begin Being Read
Approximately 5:18pm, Reading of Verdicts Ends
Approximately 5:19pm, Michael Jackson Acquitted Top Story on Yahoo News
Approximately 5.41pm, Michael Jackson Not Guilty Listed Top Story at Google News

Again, listed a few minutes earlier in the Entertainment section of Google News.

Posted by Gary Price at 6:29 PM | Permalink

May 20, 2005

Google News Study Finds Bias But Not Favoritism -- But Study Also Has Flaws A study has found that Google News results are significantly more likely to have an ideological bias than Yahoo News, though the bias will be on both ends of the spectrum.

Caveat alert! The study involved only one particular type of story -- those related to the 2004 US presidential election. Findings on one story do not indicate the situation with other types.

You can read a summary of the study in Non-traditional sources cloud Google News results from Online Journalism Review. The full study in PDF format is available here. Below, I'll highlight the findings and then give my own comments:

Findings

Bias was almost entirely attributed to "non-traditional" news sources. In other words, if all those non-traditional sites had been dropped, Google would have been seen as the same as Yahoo.
Stories coming up for searches on "George W. Bush" and "John Kerry" were analyzed.
Checks for stories were done every four hours in the two weeks before the actual election, resulting in 80 "snapshots."
Five snapshots were chosen randomly, then the first five articles in each were analyzed.
If articles required payment, a short "free" version was used if offered, otherwise the article was skipped and the "next highest" article was used.
Articles were analyzed sentence-by-sentence to check for bias in a particular direction. Reviewers were given a code to determine if they reflected bias.
Reviewers were also asked to rate stories overall, rather than on a sentence-by-sentence basis.
Despite acknowledging some weaknesses in using candidate names (and exactly what style), the study used them anyway saying it emulated what an average user would do.
While Google was found to have bias, it was more biased in both directions. In other words, Yahoo's results were more balanced overall. Google had balance and extremes at either end. It wasn't seen as slanted more or less toward liberal/conservative or Bush/Kerry.

My Observations

First, the study singles-out Google for not listing its sources. As a reminder, neither does Yahoo nor most any other news search engine I can think of, as I've written before.

Next, the study doesn't show any data of how an "average user" might search for either candidate or indeed, for information about the election at all. So when I'm told that using names in this way they were used in the way typical people might, I'm not reassured unless I see some query logs.

Most important, the study doesn't seem to take the clustering of news stories that Google does into account. Google will "cluster" similar stories under each other like this generated in a query I did on the word bush at Google News:

Bush May Risk Court Deadlock With Unpopular Choice (Update1) Bloomberg - 21 hours ago May 19 (Bloomberg) -- President George W. Bush would risk a deadlocked US Supreme Court were he to choose someone ``way out of the mainstream'' to fill a ... Reid: Bush, GOP Seek to Reinvent Reality ABC News Reid: Bush, GOP Seek to Reinvent Reality Guardian Unlimited Possible Supreme Court Vacancy Said Driving Senate Battle Over ... Black Enterprise Savannah Morning News - San Francisco Chronicle - all 2,284 related »

Social Security adviser casts doubt on Bush plan Chicago Tribune, IL - 6 hours ago WASHINGTON -- Robert Pozen, the business executive who developed the theory behind President Bush's plan to trim Social Security benefits in the future, urged ... How Bush Makes Sure They Agree Los Angeles Times Investment chief questions Bush plan Boston Globe Bush Committed to Private Accounts Plan ABC News Kansas City Star - Washington Post - all 265 related »

Bush would veto House bill on stem cells Reuters - 1 hour ago WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Bush said on Friday he would veto legislation that would loosen restrictions on embryonic stem cell research and expressed ... Bush Vows Stem Cell Veto CBS News Bush threatens veto on stem cell research bill CNN Bush Says He'd Veto Bill Easing Stem Cell Fund Limits (Update1) Bloomberg news4colorado.com - FXstreet.com - all 229 related »

Bush should have been told of plane scare - wife Reuters - 45 minutes ago AMMAN (Reuters) - Contradicting the White House line, US first lady Laura Bush said on Thursday the president should have been interrupted during a bike ride ... Mrs. Bush's 5-Day Mideast Mission CBS News Mrs. Bush: Trip Should've Been Interrupted Washington Post Mrs. Bush Says President's Bike Trip Should Have Been Interrupted ... KOTV Expressindia.com - all 85 related »

Bush cheers FCAT scores for reading Sun-Sentinel.com, FL - 2 hours ago ... The results left Gov. Jeb Bush expressing confidence the state was moving in the right direction, despite problems in the upper grades. ... FCAT scores show Dade closing gap Miami Herald FCAT Scores Rise for Students in Grades 3 through 10 WJXX Younger students fare best on FCAT Gainesville Sun Tampa Tribune - Palm Beach Post - all 81 related »

Now which five links are you counting? The ones shown in bold represent the links that are actually biggest on the Google News page. The other links are in a smaller font. Do you count the first five links you come to, or just the first biggest links. From what I can tell, the study counted just the biggest ones.

That makes a big difference when comparing to Yahoo. Yahoo doesn't cluster results, so it will show less diversity at a glance. In other words, Yahoo might show 10 stories that same the same thing, keeping alternative views out. In my experience, Google is better at clustering all 10 similar stories under one major headline/link, allowing others stories on slightly different topics/angles to emerge.

Here are more examples, to show this better. Going back to the list above, this is what you get if you count only the biggest/bold links:

As you can see, there are five different stories involved (Judicial Appointments, Social Security, Stem Cell Resarch, Plane Scare & FCAT scores).

Now compare to the first five stories listed at Yahoo News for bush:

As you can see, there are essentially only two stories represented (Iraq, Stem Cell Research)

Now go back to Google. Let's say you took the first five news links -- not the biggest/bold news links, but literally the first five actual article links you came to, just as is the case with Yahoo

Now you can see only one story is represented -- that of the fight over judicial appointments.

And the point is? Google's system allows more different stories to appear in response to a query, if you count the biggest links. That means you may end up with more diversity in views -- and yes, more bias. But count things differently, and that might go away.

It's also somewhat troubling that if a story couldn't be read without paying, it was dismissed. Yahoo has agreements with major publishers so stories can be read right on its site. Google does not. By dismissing some inaccessible stories, further skewing or bias may have been brought into the study.

Overall, it's an interesting look, but I find it hard to feel that it concludes anything.

Want to comment? Please join our forum thread, Google News Unbiased When Blogs Left Out?

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 1:25 PM | Permalink

May 17, 2005

Yahoo News Turned Into Tag Cloud

Yahoo News Tag Soup takes Yahoo News stories, extracts key concepts from article headlines and summaries, then automatically tags them into different categories. The results is a list of tags shown in "tag cloud" style, where the most popular topics show up bigger. Click on a category of interest, and you'll see all the related stories for that topic.

Pretty cool -- but why does the default have to always be alphabetical with these things? Why not show clouds ordered with the most popular categories coming first?

The creator of Yahoo News Tag Soup explains how it is done here. The Yahoo Search Blog today writes of loving it and also adds more details here.

By the way, technically this isn't tagging in the popular sense, where various members of a community label objects according to whatever syntax they want. This is clustering, where a group of documents is automatically organized into categories. But it looks and feels like tagging, so those who like to explore tag categories will feel right at home.

FYI, Yahoo News has for years had similar functionality in the apparently non-cool Full Coverage category system. Check out Yahoo Full Coverage, and you'll see stories topics placed into categories (ie, tags).

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 10:12 AM | Permalink

May 5, 2005

Yahoo Hires Cnet's Editor-in-Chief, Plans to Expand Technology Content

The Wall St. Journal is reporting (this link should work, otherwise WSJ subscribers only) that Yahoo has hired veteran journalist Patrick Houston away from Cnet where he served as Editor-in-Chief. His new title at Yahoo is general manager for technology.

...Yahoo expects to expand on its "hybrid" model of licensing content from other news providers [about 100] and featuring exclusive Yahoo content.

Yahoo News also offers a searchable database of more that 7,000 open web news sources.

Houston's hiring is yet another sign that Yahoo plans to develop more original material for various parts of their service. In November 2004, the company hired Neil Budde, a founding editor of The Wall Street Journal online, as Executive Producer of Yahoo News.

Late last week, Yahoo officially launched a new version of the Yahoo News site.

Posted by Gary Price at 12:36 AM | Permalink

April 28, 2005

New Yahoo News Leaves Beta

That was fast! The "new" Yahoo News that went live in beta about two weeks ago, here's my overview, left beta early this morning. Yahoo News also provides a tour of the new services and features here.

Posted by Gary Price at 6:53 PM | Permalink

April 18, 2005

Overture Becomes Yahoo Search Marketing & Comparing Listing Products At Yahoo To Google

The rebranding promised in March has happened. Overture has officially become Yahoo Search Marketing, marked by the launch of a new Yahoo Search Marketing site that lists all of Yahoo's search-related listing products.

It's a good change that ought to help new advertisers. Rather than having to explain that they need to buy "Overture" to be on Yahoo, Yahoo can now direct them to a site that retains its branding.

But with rebranding can come confusion, so I thought it would be helpful to look at all the products listed at the new site and also compare them to Google products. In particular, an email I got from a reader prompted the idea:

I am trying to find the "comparable" Yahoo program to Google AdWords. Since their rebranding of Overture last week, I'm still looking unsuccessfully for something like Precision Match, but it looks as if the program has been axed?

We've been using Google AdWords since it launched and are very happy with the format and back office (most of all the results). Is Yahoo offering a similar program? Honestly, I've read about their "Sponsored Search" and it's simply not obvious.

Meanwhile at our Search Engine Watch forums, a thread on the rebranding shows similar confusion:

I thought Overture was being renamed to Yahoo Search Marketing, but this page boasts a range of products, including Shopping, Travel, Directory, PPI & Overture (sponsored search).

The chart below gives you a side-by-side look at all the products listed on the new Yahoo site, along with some other listings areas that I thought made sense to add. If you're a Search Engine Watch member, see this extended post that provides commentary and additional advice and information about each listing area.

Listing Type Yahoo Google Web Search Listings Yahoo Submit Your Site Add Your URL To Google Web Search Paid Inclusion Search Submit Express & Search Submit Pro n/a (but advertisers can get listing support) Search Ads (Paid Placement) Sponsored Search AdWords (search targeted) Contextual Ads Content Match AdWords (content-targeted; AdSense is name for PUBLISHER program) Shopping Listings Product Submit Froogle Feed (free) Travel Listings Travel Submit n/a Directory Listings Directory Submit ODP Submit Local Search Ads Local Sponsored Search AdWords Regional & Local Targeting Local Search Listings Local Enhanced Listings & Local Listings (free) Google Local Business Center News Listings Yahoo News Submissions Google News Source Suggestion

Want to discuss the change from Overture to Yahoo? Visit our forum thread, Yahoo! Search Marketing is Released. Also check out Yahoo To Buy Overture for background on Yahoo buying Overture back in 2003, GoTo Makes Overture To New Name for the last rebranding Overture went through, that of losing it original name of GoTo back in 2001 and GoTo Sells Positions, about GoTo's launch in 1998.

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 9:48 AM | Permalink

April 13, 2005

New Look and Features Unveiled in Yahoo News Beta

One area that I like to pay special attention to is news search and tonight some info about a revamped Yahoo News home page and a few new features that Yahoo News will begin beta testing by midday Thursday.

Update: The beta is now live.

As you know Yahoo News uses a combination of human editors, hosted content (feeds from over 100 sources like the AP and Reuters), and a searchable algorithmic database (crawling more than 7000 sources) to power the site. Mark Glaser's recent Online Journalism Review article provides a great behind the scenes look at Yahoo News.

So, what should you look for when the changes go live sometime Thursday?

+ A new layout for Yahoo News home page. Tabbed links to news category pages (Top Stories, U.S., Business, etc.) are now linked tabs at the top of the page. They used to be listed in a column on the left site of the page.

+ Boxes containing headlines of top stories in various categories are now visible on the home page. The entire page can be customized (categories added/removed and reordered). The Top Stories category cannot be removed.

+ It's now possible to view headlines from various sources without having to click off the home page. For example, clickable tabs allow you to quickly see Top News headlines from AP, Reuters, AFP, and other sources that Yahoo has relationships with.

+ A tab labeled "My Sources" allows you the option to add RSS feeds from various sources (both mainstream news and blogs) selected by Yahoo's news editors. Interesting to note that Yahoo doesn't use the word RSS at all here.

+ A few months ago Yahoo began beta testing YQ, their contextual search technology and starting Thursday, you'll begin seeing YQ technology embedded into news stories that Yahoo hosts. The Yahoo News team has developed a glossary of terms. If one of those terms appears in a Yahoo News story, it's hyperlinked with a chevron placed next to the link. A click will open up a YQ box containng a few news headlines for that term and links to run a web search, image search, a news image search. In some cases, let's say for a sports story, you'll find links to a teams homepage, team stats, etc.

Posted by Gary Price at 11:25 PM | Permalink

April 4, 2005

Looking Inside Yahoo News

Spotted via Greg Linden, Inside Yahoo News from the Online Journalism Review looks behind the scenes about how Yahoo News is creating, ranging from human editors involved with Yahoo Full Coverage, through how use of RSS/feeds are growing, to partnerships with wire services for content that have saved it from getting sued, such as AFP is currently doing to Google.

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 3:27 PM | Permalink

March 29, 2005

On Yahoo's Mojo & The Tiresome Need For Perspective

I'd largely agree with Om Malik's idea that Yahoo is a sharper company that seen in the past, which he addresses in his How Yahoo Got Its Mojo Back. But perhaps a little perspective is in order. Some selected points and counterpoints:

Many starting to see that many of Google's forays into anything but search have been like its search results lately - off target.

Hey, I agree Google results don't feel as good as they have in the past, but neither do I feel that Yahoo's results are somehow superior. Instead, they both feel equal to each other. In short, be wary of anyone who simply declares whether search results are relevant or not without some type of backup of how exactly this is being declared so.

Google News and Froogle - well I think Jeff Jarvis has some choice words about that.

The choice words about Google News are the fact that you don't get a list of what sites Google considers news, something I'll be revisiting more in a future post. How about some transparency, Google! News flash -- Yahoo News doesn't provide transparency either. Over 7,000 news sources are declared here by Yahoo News but no list is provided, not even if you drill down as suggested into categories or use the advanced news search page. It lets you narrow by source -- but it doesn't tell you what all the news sources are.

In fact, it's typical that over the years when Search Engine Watch comes across a new news search site, we ask for a list of all sources, which are never provided. It's great that more people are demanding that Google provide a list, but it shouldn't be held to a higher standard than Yahoo or others. They should provide lists, as well.

AdWords/AdSense are great, but prone to click fraud.

I just sat on a clickfraud panel at our SES New York show earlier this year, and the audience was hardly saying that Yahoo was somehow immune to clickfraud. There are concerns with both Google and Yahoo. And if Yahoo expands its own contextual ads programs, clickfraud will expand right along with it.

What it also has a couple of guys, I like to call them blog evangelists, who knowingly or not, have brought the right kind of attention to the company. Russell Beattie who recently joined Yahoo has been blogging furiously (much to my annoyance) about Yahoo and its wireless efforts. In normal course of events, Yahoo would have issued a press release, and many of us would have paid little or no attention. Jeremy Zawodny is the other and has helped the company focus on some of the newer social media trends.

Now here's where Om's more on target to me. Yahoo seems to do much better than Google in the blogosphere. Jeremy's been out there for ages, far ahead of Yahoo itself and helping bring the company into embracing the concept of blogging. The Yahoo Search Blog as I've written before is often refreshingly non-corporate. Meanwhile, non-traditional Google has an oddly stiff corporate blog and keeps its chief personality, GoogleGuy, hidden behind a cloak of anonymity. More on this in my past post: Jeremy Zawodny: Yahoo Search Blogvangelist.

In an effort to best Google, the company has upped its free email storage to one gigabyte. Yahoo offered desktop search tool, just like Google.

Here, ironically, Yahoo has been playing catch-up. It would still be charging for significant email storage and offering terrible email searching, if it hadn't been for Google pushing it forward with Gmail. Desktop search is again an area where Google beat it and redefined how we traditionally thought of desktop search. It could be fast, free and easy to download and install.

More important, Gmail, Google Desktop and Google Maps are all examples of what I call "pulling a Google," where the company breaks the mold of how we traditionally think a product should be. Gmail said web based email could give you massive storage and be searchable. Desktop search, I've already noted Google changes in that space. Google Maps made the click and zoom model for maps seem archaic.

Believe me, I've been very, very impressed with much of what Yahoo's done over the past year in the area I watch, search. It massively improved web search (though disappointingly still doesn't provide good enough transparency on paid inclusion). Shopping search, local search are products that feel much more refined than their Google counterparts. Yahoo Images expanded last year, while Google Images was stale for more than six months. Personalized search through My Yahoo Search looks promising and hopefully will eventually get out of beta. Yahoo moves on blog and feed searching are also impressive, especially when Google has done nil in that area.

But when many where enthralled about how wonderful Google was, I almost felt tiresome in having to go back and sound a reality check on some accolades it would get. Some examples:

In 2004, the New York Times runs an article about "searching" that as I note assumes that Google is the only search engine out there, ignoring Yahoo.
In 2003, the New York Times has a column suggesting that Google is godlike in knowing everything. As today, I urge that perspective is sorely needed.
In 2002, a "The Age Of Google" article suggests that before Google, we found nothing. I strongly disagreed (scroll down to the Search Engine Articles section for my comments).

I was far from the only one saying that Google wasn't perfect. I know my fellow editors Chris Sherman and Gary Price made and wrote similar comments, as did people far and wide across the web. But these voices were often lost in all the Google love out there.

As with Google, so too Yahoo. Perspective is always helpful. We may be entering a "Yahoo's Hot; Google's Not" time among the "chattering classes" as Om calls them. But that isn't the same as "Yahoo's In; Google's Out" overall. Even when Google was seen as the hottest thing going, Yahoo still kept many, many of its loyal users. Similarly, while Google is taking many PR hits, that's not necessarily meaning that it's actually losing the less chattering users that depend on it.

The reality is that both companies have strengths and weaknesses. The competition between them is ultimately good news, in that they should stay on their toes and benefit us all.

Postscript: Yahoo's Jeremy Zawodny in Getting our Mojo at Yahoo? Yeah. And some new DNA too comments on some of the reasons why he feels the company has gained more attention recently.

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 1:36 PM | Permalink

February 12, 2005

Feed Search at Yahoo?

Yeterday, Steve "I'm reviewing my logs" Rubel over at Micro Persuasion posted an item about noticing a crawler named "Yahoo-NewsCrawler Test" in his RSS logs. The Yahoo News "test" crawler (Yahoo also has a crawler named Yahoo Newscrawler) was also seen and reported in a WMW post about two weeks ago. Rubel's posts goes on to speculate that Yahoo might be adding an feed search option to their news search database and/or offer it as a standalong service. It's a good question but Yahoo! isn't offering any details about what, if anything, they're up to at this time. We asked Yahoo! for a comment and received back the following:

As part of our ongoing commitment to improving the user experience we are always testing a variety of new technologies.

Posted by Gary Price at 1:16 PM | Permalink

January 14, 2005

Yahoo Gains Financial Feeds; A Revisit To Yahoo News Feeds

Yahoo gained RSS feeds for news content last fall, and now it has regained them for the Yahoo Finance service, Yahoo's Jeremy Zawodny reports in his Yahoo Finance RSS Feeds Return post.

For financial feeds, visit the Yahoo Finance RSS feed tool that's now been created. Enter a symbol, and magically, logos to add the feed to your My Yahoo account or any newsreader through an XML icon and URL will appear. Slick.

Note that the tool doesn't check whether the company stock symbol you enter is valid, so ensure that you have it correct first. Jeremy notes in his post that you can enter multiple symbols separated by commas (yhoo,goog) to make a "portfolio" style feed.

How about a revisit to getting those Yahoo News feeds? OK! First, visit the Yahoo News RSS Feed page. There, you'll find a variety of feeds in various categories such as "science" or "health" have already been created.

Not enough? Need something custom. Scroll down to the search box, enter a term and a feed will load in your browser. Ugh -- that needs to change to work like the Yahoo Finance tool, where you get clickable links.

Have no fear, there's a better workaround. Go to Yahoo News, do a keyword search for what you are interested in. Now look in the right-hand column of the page. You'll see an "ADD TO MY YAHOO! / RSS" section. Use the My Yahoo button that's offered to subscribe through My Yahoo or the XML icon to subscribe through other means.

As a reminder, over at MSN Search, feed support web search results was added this week. More on that here: MSN Search Makes RSS Search Feeds Official.

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 9:28 AM | Permalink

October 3, 2004

Yahoo News Results as an RSS Feed

Online about about a month ago, officially online today, Yahoo News has added a link on every search news search results page (right column) that allows the searcher to add the search query directly to their My Yahoo page. New results will be delivered as a "feed" on My Yahoo pages.

It's possible to create and transport advanced queries to a My Yahoo page. However, you cannot limit to a specific source.

As of today, RSS-based delivered Yahoo News search results will only work with My Yahoo.

However, later this week, look for a second button on the right side of the page which will allow you to take Yahoo News search result feeds and add them to ANY aggregator.

Posted by Gary Price at 4:19 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

September 27, 2004

Postscript On Google News & Bias

Last week, JD Lasica wrote about a possible bias with Google News, as Gary recapped here: Does Google News Have A Conservative Bias? I sent JD some of my thoughts after the article came out.

I explained that Yahoo News is less human-powered when it comes to keyword-based news search than you might think and that Yahoo's ranking algorithm, by favoring content actually hosted by Yahoo, may make searches at Yahoo News more mainstream in nature. Those comments are part of a postscript he's now put up: More on Google News and Yahoo News.

Among additional thoughts from others: Bush's nicknames like "Dubya" or "Shrub" may mean critical articles about him show up more for those, rather than his actual name and an allegation that Google is responding to behind-the-scenes manipulation by right-wing groups (odd, given that if the company has any leaning, it's definitely toward the left).

Chris Sherman also takes a look at the issue in today's SearchDay: Is Google News Biased?

Want to comment or discuss? Visit our forum thread: Does Google News have a Conservative Bias?

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 6:56 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

September 23, 2004

Does Google News Have A Conservative Bias?

JD Lasica takes a look political coverage at Google News and Yahoo News in Balancing Act: How News Portals Serve Up Political Stories from the Online Journalism Review.

>From the article, "Google News uses computer algorithms to identify top stories while Yahoo News favors old-fashioned human editors. But do Google's automated search results display a conservative bias?"

A good "behind the scenes" read.

On Tuesday, New Scientist reports that Google News China omits controversial material .

On Monday, PC World's Harry McCracken recently posted about issues he's found with Google News.

In August, Vin Crosbie released a report about Google News. He wrote, "Although Google spiders more than 4,500 news sources, only about dozen account for the vast majority of stories on Google News. And two of those dozen predominant sources are owned and operated by the U.S. and Chinese governments."

On a related note: Another resource, Topix.net (not mentioned in the story) offers more than 150,000 topic oriented pages pages built by machine from a crawl of more than 7000 source. They also offer an explanation about how pages are built using their NewsRank technology.

I'm betting that Rick Skrenta (CEO of Topix) and Greg Linden (CEO of Findory) will have some comments about the OJR article.

Want to comment or discuss this topic? Please visit our forum thread: News Search & Biases.

Posted by Gary Price at 8:53 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

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