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Wed - February 18, 2004


A New, More Blog-Friendly Search 



What, we syndicated? Yes, and more broadly than you might think. 

Yahoo! quietly launched the beta version of its new search engine in the U.S. last night, declaring its independence as an algorithmic search engine for the first time and promising to give Google a challenge or two. Yahoo!, which owns Alta Vista, FAST, and Overture, previously licensed its algorithmic search results from Google, which is also based in Silicon Valley.

I haven't benchmarked search results on both platforms, but I did notice one feature this morning in the new Yahoo! Search that may interest bloggers and other users of Really Simple Syndication (RSS): If a web site included in a list of search results has an RSS feed on its front page, Yahoo! Search identifies the feed ("View as XML") and lets the searcher subscribe to it right on the search results page ("Add to My Yahoo!"). This allows searchers to use Yahoo! search as a means of signing up for content feeds from their favorite blogs and from blogs on topics relevant to their search.

The integration of RSS with search is very convenient—and potentially a big boon for the RSS format. In the meantime, I've placed an "Add to My Yahoo!" link in the left-hand column if you'd like to include Bear Left on your My Yahoo! page. To incorporate an "Add to My Yahoo!" feature into your own blog, follow the instructions here.

 

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