by Head of Search
Andrew Girdwood
"This is the biggest campaign that Yahoo! have mounted for five or six years," said the head of search at Yahoo! Europe.Andrew Girdwood
Yahoo! Answers launched in the US at the start of the year and has enjoyed strong coverage in Yahoo's Search blog. Yahoo! Answers have been available in a beta test format in the United Kingdom since April. Yahoo!'s other social search offerings, such as MyWeb and del.icio.us, have been available longer. Search engine Yahoo! acquired del.icio.us in December 2005. Delicious was founded in 2003 and is one of the best known social bookmarking tools to use a folksonomy tagging approach.
Rather than encouraging users to search through recommended web pages for answers to pesky questions, Yahoo! Answers works by allowing users to put their questions directly to the community where "answerers" compete with each other to provide the best answers. A prominent search box allows would-be questioners to search the site before hand to see whether their question has already been asked and answered. Answerers are encouraged to provide quality answers through a rating system which promotes users to expert status within verticals.
Google Answers is a similar service but uses a core of 500 tested Researchers who answer questions for small amounts of money instead. Yahoo! Answers is free and has an estimated 50 million users and some 75 million answers in the system. Yahoo earns revenue from the service by sometimes placing contextual search advertising adverts in answers and through traditional banner slots.
Yahoo has the option of allowing Yahoo! Answer pages to enter its main search engine. Yahoo! Answer pages which appear in Yahoo's main search results drive search traffic back into Yahoo. Yahoo! Answer pages do not turn away other search engines and today Google has about 6.5 million pages from answers.yahoo.com in its index. Yahoo! Answers can drive traffic from other search engines to Yahoo!. Yahoo! Answers could also appear as Yahoo Shortcuts above the main search results.
Stephen Taylor, head of search and search marketing at Yahoo! Europe said, "We do see our core internet search and social search getting closer and closer together. Essentially, what you are building is a global knowledge database."
The search engine is backing Yahoo! Answers formal entry to the UK with a multimillion-pound advertising campaign. "This is the biggest campaign that Yahoo! have mounted for five or six years," said Taylor. "It's a measure of the confidence we have in Yahoo! Answers."
Yahoo! Answers enjoyed a four page inset in newspapers such as the Metro on Monday morning as the search engine attempts to lure new users to the market as well as compete against entrenched competition from Google and ExpertsExchange.
Yahoo! is seen by many to have the social search edge over Google as millions of users have a Yahoo! account already and Google only this year merged user log-ins for various services into a single "Google Account". Yahoo! Messenger and Yahoo! 360 allows users to network their account with their friends which is a critical step in online community building. Google will challenge on the social search front through Google Notebook, Google Co-op and also Google Talk.
