Originally published June 7 2005
New yahoo search engine is of two minds about keywords: Shopping and research
by Mike Adams, the Health Ranger, NaturalNews Editor
To try and mimic the success of Google and its many beta products at GoogleLabs, Yahoo has a similar skunkworks outpost called YahooNext. Here, web surfers can find all sorts of neat Yahoo-related programs, the neatest of which, according to PC Word's Harry McCracken, is Yahoo Mindset. The search engine has a sliding scale which allows users to tailor their search-engine responses to more shopping-oriented or research-oriented items (which Yahoo calls "Intent-Driven Search"), or to make an adjustment somewhere in between. McCracken found some discrepancies in his slider settings (such as a shopping search of Dell Computers which called up Dell tech support), but notes the site has a plethora of disclaimers saying this is simply an experimental product.
OK, enough about Google and the beta products on its Google Labs page.
Yahoo has an uncannily similar skunkworks outpost called Yahoo Next--imitation is the sincerest form of search-engine competition--and it, too, is fun to rummage around in.
At the moment, Yahoo Next is playing host to everything from a beta of a new version of Yahoo Messenger to a travel search engine called Yahoo Travel FareChase.
Mindset is a search engine of two minds--it's designed to be used for both shopping searches and less commerce-oriented research.
Shove the slider all the way to "researching," and you're likely to find pages from the Wikipedia near the top of your results; move it over to "shopping," and the first few sites may be places that sell whatever it was you were searching for.
We are a site for folks who buy technology stuff; we're not, however, an online store.
But Mindset's most obvious weakness in my trial run was this: The sites that show up near the top may fit the bill as either "shopping" or "research" as appropriate, but they often didn't seem to be the most logical, big-name contenders.
For instance, when I searched for "Dell Computer" with the slider set to "shopping," I kind of expected to get the site of...well, Dell Computer.
Instead, a pricing page (at Yahoo itself) for Dell-compatible RAM was up top.
Link #2 was to Dell's tech support site (which sounds more like "researching" to me), and link #3 was the first one that pointed to Dell's e-commerce area.
But hey, Mindset is accompanied by a page with lots of disclaimers that it's merely an experimental demo, along with other interesting information about the technology behind the service.
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