Yahoo Search Pad (Beta) Research Tool
Friday, July 10, 2009 11:34Yahoo will launch a new tool on Tuesday to help people organize research they do on the Yahoo search engine. The Yahoo Search Pad will automatically save search results when it notices the user is doing research, which should make it easier for people to come back to a project on subsequent days to do more work.
Other Web notebook projects have notably failed, or at least failed to become important. Tools like Google Notebook and JetEye are (or were) all very strong tools for saving Web search results, but they require intent on the part of the user. They save nothing without the user asking for it to be saved. Search Pad, in contrast, watches what the user does (as long as they’re doing it on Yahoo), and, according to Yahoo VP of Consumer Experience Larry Cornett, “uses deep science to recognize when someone is doing research.”
In other words, if you’re scanning for a funny video of a cat to occupy yourself during a conference call, it won’t kick in. But if you’re searching on a medical condition or researching a car or other major purchase, it will notice that you’re clicking a lot of links, create a dossier for you in the background, and start to catalog your search results.
In my testing, it didn’t work quite as advertised. While the service, which sits innocuously in the corner of Yahoo search result pages, collected Web site titles, pictures, and URLs in a little notebook, it never popped up to help me organize them despite me clicking dozens of times on sites during a test on a medical condition. However, the product is still a day from launch and the on-screen demo I got on it earlier was compelling.
Yahoo Search Pad: An online notebook that watches you
The service collects pages and links for you, although in my testing it just saved everything without categorizing it.
(Credit: Screenshot by Rafe Needleman/CNET)
The entries that Search Pad saves can be added to with text, or deleted, moved, printed, or e-mailed, making a well-stocked “pad” a potentially very useful reference even when a user is not on the Yahoo search site. And as I said, the idea of a notebook that automatically stocks itself is sound, especially if it proves to be accurate in noticing when you’re doing research and if it makes it easy to remove entries you don’t want to follow up on (that, at least, I can confirm it does).
The service separates Yahoo from Google and Microsoft search engines. Were it working, and were I doing research on a complex topic, I would strongly consider using Yahoo search instead of an engine that gives only results, and then leaves it to you to sort and save them. Search Pad adds real value to search.
Ariese says:
July 10th, 2009 at 12:02 pm
They should get the first 2 words of the title the proper way first, extremely important! Other wise every user will still need the college degree and a good credit score to use the engine to get anywhere. I am not talking about Developers that write the code to aggregate the info, but the “What the heck happened to IDEA?” 2 weeks later. anyway…
Zimso says:
July 17th, 2009 at 1:07 am
Yahoo is making a good move here by trying to introduce something to improve its search service. The leading theory it seemed was that Yahoo would lose out to Bing on that number two spot and no one was really sure if they would focus on search any longer.
This at least lets it be known that Yahoo still considers search an important enough part of its services to continue to grow. Which should make it’s shareholders happy for whatever its worth.
Couple this with news of all of Microsoft’s new partnerships and additions and it looks like the search industry might begin to pick up with a new fire being lid underneath the challengers to Google’s throne.
It looks like the search industry is getting to the point where innovation and advancements should become a frequent occurrence because companies are trying to be the leader. It might yet take years for a real game changer to surface but it’s at promising to know it could happen.