First up, we have three new sorting options near the top of the search page. You can now sort search results by “Relevance,” “Newest” and “Most Answers.”

If you have a tendency to search for a particular topic more than others, you can now perform an “Advanced Search” and save your filter settings for future searches. You can add up to ten saved searches to the “My Saved Searches” list and edit or delete them as you wish.

For more information, and a tip on how to score 20 easy Yahoo! Answers points, check out this post from the Yahoo! Answers blog.

Yahoo! Search Team

Ten years ago when the World Wide Web was just taking off, pundits declared that it would change our world. And many of their predictions have been correct — commerce, news and information, communications, politics — they’ve all been affected and in many ways transformed by the Web. The Speaker engaging the Answers community for input on active legislation is simply more evidence of the Web’s transformative power. And it brings us one small step closer to the vision Lincoln outlined.

While we don’t yet know how this data will be used by the Speaker and her staff, we hope you’ll take the time to share your thoughts on reversing global warming.

Nathan Gamble
Yahoo! Search

What about you — have you created or used any interesting pipes? We’d love to hear about ‘em!

Raj Gossain
Yahoo! Search

But even with all that knowledge being shared, one of the biggest pieces of feedback we’ve gotten from our users is to make Answers "smarter", enabling them to get even better answers to their questions and connect to the smart people they know in (and out of) Answers. Well today, we think Yahoo! Answers just got a little bit smarter.

We just added a new capability to Answers, the Yahoo! Answers Network – currently in beta, which enables you to build your own personal knowledge network. So what exactly is a knowledge network? Simply put, it enables you to directly connect with people whose knowledge you value so you can easily share knowledge and discover interesting information on topics you care about.

More specifically, the Yahoo! Answers Network enables you to see if any of your contacts have asked a question, provided a great answer, or simply "starred" a question they found interesting. Here’s a screenshot of the Answers homepage for a user that has built out their Network:

By adding people to your network, Answers becomes a more personal, productive, and interesting experience, enabling you to tap into the knowledge of your network. There are two easy ways to build your network: 1) add anyone you find interesting in Answers simply by clicking "Add to My Contacts" – just mouse over their picture or go to their profile page; 2) invite your friends to join you on Answers. The bigger your network, the more likely you are to receive useful, timely answers to your questions from people who you know have the answers. In the end, Answers gets smarter for you because you"ll get smarter answers.

For details on how it works click here, and for even more information check out the Answers blog. And as the Yahoo! Answers Network is currently in beta, we look forward to your feedback. In just over a year, Yahoo! Answers has grown into a global community. The knowledge, expertise, wisdom, opinions, and personal experiences that are shared are truly astounding and unique to the Web, and we like to think, to Yahoo!. We hope that the addition of the Answers Network will allow our users to create lasting connections with one another and improve their lives and their communities.

The Answers Network is completely optional, so if you want to opt out you have that option. But, we hope you’ll come build your personal knowledge network and grow what you know.

Elizabeth Douglas
Yahoo! Answers

Recently, Indian President Dr. APJ Abdul Kalam asked the Answers community for thoughts on creating a safer place for everyone to live, one of the many leaders who have already asked, and answered questions within the Yahoo! community. And now, with the 2008 US Presidential campaign beginning to heat up, potential candidates are eager to listen to online communities and teach them about their platforms. Regardless of party affiliation, the Web represents a very active and engaged public and a potent way to reach out to people.

Today, Hillary Clinton, — who just announced she’s formed a commission to explore joining the 2008 presidential race, — returns to Yahoo! Answers to ask the community, “Based on your own family’s experience, what do you think we should do to improve health care in America?”

As the race heats up, we hope additional candidates will look to Yahoo! Answers as a way to gauge what’s on the minds of Americans. Answers is an open exchange of information, knowledge and ideas, and is a non-partisan community forum.

Please go to Yahoo! Answers to respond to Hillary Clinton’s question. You can also continue the discussion over on the Yahoo! Answers blog.

Patrick Crane
Yahoo! Search

When you star a question, we add that question to your Answers profile page where you can see all your activity, points, questions, answers, etc.

This activity, along with all the other ways users tell us what they like (and don’t like) on Yahoo! Answers, we use to help surface the most interesting questions and answers for the rest of the Yahoo! community ‘ much like Flickr Interestingness and Delicious Popular.

For the complete story, please see Elizabeth’s post on the Yahoo! Answers blog.

Tara Kirchner
Yahoo! Search

• Gifts! Lots of ‘em. If you’re a Level Two and up, you can sign up to receive a thank you gift for sharing your knowledge with the world. Hats, mugs, fleeces, keychains, and stickers.
• Best of Answers. With millions of questions and answers, our team selected a few favorites that showcase how much we all know. As James Surowieki notes, many are smarter than a few.
• We’re also having a party tonight here in California for local Yahoo! Answers users, and we’ve flown in 25 special guests ? resourceful and knowledgeable users who’ve distinguished themselves through their extraordinary performance on Yahoo! Answers, including category leaders, featured users, and more.

This is a picture of some of our answers users who’ve joined us in California for our birthday party!

To keep pace with our users, we’ve been busy enhancing the product. Since it’s launch a year ago, Yahoo! Answers has really grown. We also camped out in New York City’s Times Square and launched Yahoo! Answers worldwide. We drank our own Kool-Aid by developing a Yahoo! Answers area for Yahoo! products, integrated into search and into our own help pages. And there’s more to come.

Happy holidays to everyone who helps make the Web a great place!

Patrick Crane
Yahoo!, VP Marketing

The Yahoo! Answers community continues to thrive and grow. We believe in the power of community; in people helping people get answers to their questions.

So, this is an open invitation for those researchers to join us. Please consider sharing your knowledge with millions of people on Yahoo! Answers; connect with users with shared interests; get answers to all your questions; and help build the world’s most vibrant and trusted community.

The folks who are researchers and information specialists have been at this longer than us, and there’s a lot we can learn from you. We’ve set up a Yahoo! Group for former Google Answers Researchers and we’d prefer that one of the exGARs help moderate the group.

Finally, we’re also going to be meeting up with some of the most prolific Yahoo! Answers users here at the Sunnyvale campus on Wednesday, December 13. And we’d like Google Answers researchers to join us, tell us what you think and get to know what we’re doing here. Please drop us a line!

We look forward to seeing you on Yahoo! Answers!

Tomi Poutanen
Yahoo! Social Search

That is the big question Oprah Winfrey asks over on Yahoo! Answers. Her visit coincides with the airing of one of Oprah’s favorite challenges on her television show, where audience members get $1000 and a video camera to document how they choose to spend the money to help others. Meanwhile, the Yahoo! Answers community has responded with an outpouring of creativity and brotherliness ? at the time of this post, there were more than 28,000 responses and rising fast, with people ruminating on spending the money locally versus sending the money overseas, where the effect could be greater.

Head over to the Yahoo! Answers blog for the complete story, and don’t forget to leave your own answer as well.

Happy Holidays!

As you can see, the new section features an excerpt of the best answers to questions that are relevant to your search. The excerpt gives you a more detailed preview of the content from the Answers community before you click through. In this example for “best hybrid cars” you actually get a whole lot of information – one best answer cites the breadth of hybrids to choose from, another user mentions he’s heard good things about the Prius, and another discusses the potentially lower maintenance of hybrids.

So if you’re looking for personal experiences with tennis camps, finding places off the beaten path, or researching the best hybrid car, you’ll now have an extra option on Yahoo! Search (scroll down the results to see them).

Try it and let us know what you think – your feedback is essential and very appreciated.

Happy Thanksgiving! (Don?t forget the pumpkin pie!)

Ya-Bing Chu
Product Manager, Yahoo! Search