Yahoo! has announced enhancements to its Yahoo! Search assist in the form of real-time search suggestions to queries.
The new suggestion algorithm will provide suggestions which are much nearer to real-time than ever before, something that’s especially relevant when top news stories or sporting events are unfolding, for example.
Yahoo! drew on the World Cup in its blog to outline how the new algorithm would assist a user wanting to know which match would be coming next in the tournament.
SEO
It’s an interesting move from Yahoo! and one that may help to push it forwards again in the search engine market. SEO professionals have long since put Yahoo! on a backburner in terms of its importance in search marketing, because it has lost so much of its search market share and has been concentrating efforts elsewhere, seemingly giving up on search.
But this on-the-ball development indicates that in terms of SEO, Yahoo! is not quite yet dead in the water. In a similar vein of focusing on real-time, user-generated content, Yahoo! is also set to reverse the dogma of news selection and deliverance.
The company has developed a new model which will see it tomorrow launch a news blog whose topics will be guided by search queries from web users. This new approach flies in the face of the traditional news dissemination model, whereby editors decide what the masses need to know, and what they don’t.
Named The Upshot, the blog will be produced from analysis of common words and search terms from users of Yahoo!’s online network.
These developments show that while Yahoo! retains none of its former search glory, it is still one to watch.
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