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October 04, 2004

Personal Search: My Yahoo! Search Beta

Today we launched a preview of My Yahoo! Search, our first foray into what we're calling Personal Search. Put simply, Personal Search is about combining the power of search engines with the empowerment of personal technology.

The shift from analog to digital technology is reshaping much of the world around us, perhaps most noticeably in the realm of media. It seems like some of the most profound and transformative product introductions over the last few years are technologies that empower users to consume media how and when they want to, e.g., Tivo (tv), Netflix (home video), ipod (music) and of course blogs (news and information). In the world of search, this means that you should be able to define your own search experience. Today, the Web is a read-only source of information for most users; our vision is of a very individual Web — a "My Web", if you will — which each user creates by searching, browsing, navigating, and generally doing the things they always do. My Yahoo! Search is our first step in that direction.

But getting back to the here and now... vision aside, our user research has shown that My Yahoo! Search addresses a whole host of everyday search problems. If you've ever experienced the tedium of searching again for something you found before but can't quite remember, if you've ever been annoyed by search results you don't like but show up again and again, if you ever wanted to share something you found in search but were forced to cut-and-paste... give My Yahoo! Search a shot.

Try it out at our concept testing site and let us know what you think.

Kevin Akira Lee
Senior Product Manager
Yahoo! Search

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Comments

That's a very good idea, it can be very useful.

I think it would also be interesting if with "My Yahoo! Search" there was an option to search within the Yahoo! Bookmarks.

Posted by: Michael P. | October 5, 2004 12:06 AM

As well as personal dat like emails, briefcase, photos, notepad and all !

Posted by: Guillaume | October 5, 2004 02:35 AM

This is really great!!

It would be nice if I could share my search results/bookmarks like Bloglines/public/ or http://del.icio.us

Posted by: Pramod Biligiri | October 5, 2004 03:45 AM

I'm kind of interested in this personal search thing but rapidly losing interest in My Yahoo!
After using My Yahoo! for many, many years it is beginning to lose it's grasp on my digital life and I may have abandoned it entirely today.

With RSS and Bloglines there is no longer any reason to go to My Yahoo! for customized content as I have done in years past. I get better customized feeds in a much better format from Bloglines.

So let's see what else I use My Yahoo! for in my own personal case.

1. Calendar. I've always accessed my calendar through my My Yahoo! home page. The problem? I have to click through to actually get my calendar. So instead I've just put a direct link to my calendar in my Firefox quick launch bookmark bar and can go direct skipping the side trip through My Yahoo!.

2. Driving directions. Ditto. I always hated the additional few steps I had to go through from the My Yahoo! home page to actually get my driving directions. Instead I just put a link in my Firefox quick launch bar directly to Yahoo!'s driving directions.

3. What else. Yahoo/SBC mail preview. It does me no good because the majority of the time I want to access this email via My Yahoo! I'm at work and work has blocked Yahoo! mail from coming in to the office. Since I've moved my blog to another hosting company I just use their remote email anyways.

So that's it for me. Unless I'm missing something significant here I'm done with My Yahoo! RIP. With Bloglines/RSS, direct buttons to yahoo calendar and driving directions and a non Yahoo! email/hosting provider I simply don't need it anymore.

It still bothers me that as an SBC My Yahoo! client I can't upgrade to the beta but frankly I'm not sure that there would be anything there anyways which would convince me to stay.

Posted by: Thomas Hawk | October 5, 2004 09:51 AM

There are other, possibly better services for searching of PersonalWeb, bookmarks and so on. One such is Simpy ( http://www.simpy.com ). Delicious is cool, but its search is really bad.

Posted by: Mike | October 6, 2004 08:12 AM

Wakeup yahoo! personalization is dead and you'are not going to change that.. my yahoo! locks up users, not empowers them. How can you be so blind? You used to be such a reasonable company before..

Posted by: maf | October 7, 2004 05:42 AM

Where do you come from??? "personalization is dead"... Can you be more explicit in your comment

Posted by: Guillaume | October 9, 2004 04:48 PM

Y!Q searchbar...great tool! i like the idea that i can easily return to my point of initial interest on my yahoo!homepage, immediately. i find it quite handy. doug

Posted by: doug | February 14, 2005 04:14 PM