Yahoo! Blended Search: Playing Competitions' Videos in Search Results
Yahoo!'s launched a new way of delivering its results to searchers. It is quite subtle in its styling, the Yahoo! logo is now all the way over on the right. There's a bit of a difference in font and color changes. It is actually pretty pleasing to the eye.
I have to say, all of the changes from Yahoo!, Live and Ask, make it a "nice" viewing experience. Comparing them to Google's results, Google looks "old" and "harsh". Perhaps it's just my own personal preferences, compared to Yahoo!, Google seems to just now "SHOUT THEIR ADS" at you, where with Yahoo!, Live and Ask's new changes, the focus really does seem to come back to the results, not the ads.
Loren Baker & Eric Lander of Search Engine Journal have some great articles about Yahoo!'s new launch and they also take a look at how to optimize for the new Yahoo! interface.
These days, everything that is new & launched in the search engine space, keeps being dubbed as a "Google Killer". We had Wikiasari Hysteria, Mahalo Insaneness and now the other three search engines are launching new interfaces, algorithms, and integrations. I'll reserve my opinions on Yahoo!'s new launch truly being a Google Killer, as I really think the term "Google Killer" needs to be retired as much as the phrases "You're Fired!" and "That's Hawt".
It's great to see Yahoo! actually putting both feet into this. For the past 4-5 months, it's been like watching a receiver perpetually catching the football in the end zone with one foot in and the other foot dragging on the white line or over it. Yahoo has had videos and photos for popular artists, but nothing really integrated from Flickr or their own video services into its search results until now. Now, finally the receiver's dragging foot has hit the green turf rather than that white line and is making touchdown scores.
Not only is Yahoo! including video listings from its own Yahoo! Video Service within its search results, it's including YouTube and Metacafe videos. Not that that's anything to write home about, but what is to take particular note to, is the fact that YouTube & Metacafe videos will play within the Yahoo! results. If you compare that to Google's results, Google only plays Google Videos and YouTube Videos in its results and "doesn't play nice with others", so to speak.
(youtube videos showing & playing in Yahoo Results)
(youtube videos playing in Yahoo Results)
(youtube videos showing & playing in Yahoo Results)
(metacafe videos showing & playing in Yahoo Results)
(metacafe videos showing in Google Results but not playing)
The fact that Yahoo! is incorporating its competitions videos and they can play in the results shows that Yahoo! truly is concerned about delivering the most relevant results to the searcher. Taking a look at it that way, it makes it look like Google's only interested in giving the "best results" when their properties are "the best". If anything will be the "Google Killer", this ability to integrate everyone's "stuff" into the search results, could be it.
Now that all four search engines are on board the Universal-Blended-3d search train, search marketing has now truly entered a new level of marketing. The days of just 10 blue links are now absolutely in the past.
"For the past 4-5 months, it's been like watching a receiver perpetually catching the football in the end zone with one foot in and the other foot dragging on the white line or over it. "
Huuh?
:)
Posted by: Lisa Barone | October 02, 2007 at 12:23 PM
LOL.... Lisa do I have to send you a football lingo book? :)
basically.... they were so close to "getting it right", but they just couldn't get it together, not until this re-launch. Maybe that makes more sense?
I'm just so much in a football state of mind, can ya tell? :P
Posted by: Li Evans | October 02, 2007 at 12:53 PM
"The days of just 10 blue links, are now absolutely in the past."
While I couldn't agree more, sometimes it gets a bit annoying to see all those extra bits (thumbnails, etc). They could just let us know what format the content is (video, image, PDF, etc.) and I'd be just as happy :-)
Posted by: Gauntlet | October 03, 2007 at 01:42 AM