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July 25, 2008

Stan Lee and Breaking News in Yahoo! Search

Yahoo! Search recently made some significant enhancements for queries related to breaking news. The goal was to improve the freshness and recency of Search and show breaking news articles faster than before.

Here's how we improved things:

  • Based on the newsworthiness of each query, we're now displaying the News Direct Display (DD) in the most relevant position(s) on SERP

  • We're also better able to detect queries that are newsworthy, which means we're showing more fresh News DDs than before

This improves the user experience in a few ways. First, because we're better able to detect when a query is about a breaking news topic, we're able to deliver fresher results when it matters most. Second, by displaying News DDs in multiple positions, we can deliver a more relevant search experience for users. For example, if you're an X-Men fan and you search for Stan Lee, you'll find the latest news about his cameo in the upcoming flick. But there's a good chance you might just be looking for background on the superhero comic book creator, so putting the News DD at a slightly lower position makes more sense.


Stan Lee


Give it a try by searching for a news topic that's top of mind for you and let us know your thoughts.


Paul Yiu, Product Management, Yahoo! Search
Jean-Francois Crespo, R&D, Yahoo! Search

Permalink | Comments (7) | | Bookmark | del.icio.us | digg | Filed In: Search

Comments

You could just put it as a suggestion in the 'also try' area

Posted by: Public Relations | July 26, 2008 10:50 PM

It's a nice idea, better to get Latest news on certain query when you are searching for something..
You guys rock!!!

Posted by: SEO India | July 27, 2008 08:58 PM

Can you give some explanation as to how you are better able to detect when a query is about a breaking news topic?

Posted by: Tim | July 28, 2008 04:48 AM

Great feature.
I wonder if it is introduced to Yahoo! Japan.
(I'm a Japanese webmaster.)

Posted by: 海外SEO | July 29, 2008 09:57 AM

I wonder how does Yahoo! determine the "relevant position" placement of News Direct Display. Some queries show it on third, others on top.

Posted by: Elmer | July 29, 2008 10:15 PM

It seems to only appear on top or on fourth place.

My guess is that you need to know how's the repercussion of a given subject among the news of the day, considering a bunch of trusted news sources. So if a user searches for 'iraq war', the system will check how often such terms appeared among the news of the day (number of sources that published news with the query terms Vs. total number of sources) and their relevance (considering position, idf, frequency, if it�s a perfect match or not, etc, etc.).

Ex.: if 10 among 100 sources published news where 'iraq war' appeared on title, it's obviously a relevant subject of the day, then you need to determine which scores deserve a top or a fourth place. To determine that you probably need to run experiments with real people, making them vote for first or fourth among several news related queries to determine the threshold score.

Maybe that's why 'great war' or even 'the great war' also shows a DD on screen, and I don't think it should, since The Great War is far from being a news topic of the day.

Posted by: Rafael Costa | July 30, 2008 06:53 AM

To determine that you probably need to run experiments with real people.

Posted by: kabin | August 6, 2008 06:35 AM

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