Today was a big day for search.
In the early days of the Web, finding information was accomplished through human-edited directories (the most popular of which was Yahoo). Despite the increasing complexity of sites and services available on the Web, search results have remained essentially the same since the switch to crawler-based search in the late 1990s. Results have actually grown more standardized over the last decade; the ubiquitous search results page now features the familiar blue, gray, green color scheme we’ve seen for quite a few years.
Yahoo wants to change that. Today the search company began to detail its new search platform, complete with microformat support and an overall attempt to jump-start the embrace of Sir Tim’s vision of a semantic Web.
Attempts at more useful results
Semantic results are the natural evolution of search. Instead of providing a plain title/description/URL listing for pages in a result list, Yahoo hopes to open up the structure to allow site owners to have a bit of customization of how their results appear.
Experiments with results reformatting have been taking place for a while. Google’s Sitelinks – extra links to navigation points within a site that appear below a site’s main listing – now appear frequently in results pages, and searches for local services lead off with a map-based view of business listings. Google’s Experimental Search area has offered map, timeline, and info views for results since May of last year, but it has unfortunately stayed buried within the depths of Google Labs.
Yahoo wants to put semantic search front and center. As Yahoo mentions in their announcement, more relevant search results benefit the search engine, the content creator, and the searcher.
Control may be the difference
Although Google has experimented with contextual views, Yahoo’s announcement takes a somewhat risky yet possibly rewarding extra step: webmaster control of results. The Yahoo announcement gives a visual example of a LinkedIn result that features action links, network stats, and profile information. An earlier Yelp result mockup included location and rating information of a Japanese restaurant.
It’s wonderful to see that Yahoo is pushing forward with semantic results by supporting open microformats and service-specific search results. The icing on the cake will be the control given to webmasters to improve the usefulness of their sites’ results.
For the first time in years, we’re on the brink of a revolution in the world of online search.
