Y-Q
Y!Q: Adding Context to Search
Everytime we launch a new service, someone asks where the idea came from and why we did it. There's a good story behind this one, so I thought I'd write it up here.
A bit over a year ago, Jeff ran across a story on Yahoo! News about the #1 song in the UK during the Christmas holiday. It was the Gary Jules remake of the Tears for Fears song Mad World. This caught his interest and he wanted to know more.
Why is this song so popular? Where can I hear it? Is there a video? Can I buy it?
He spent the next 30 minutes searching for answers to those questions and more.
It turns out that the song's popularity had a lot to do with the movie Donnie Darko. The movie became a cult hit and the song was on the soundtrack.
But I digress..
As a result of this experience, he posed a challenge to the Yahoo! Search team: to build technology that makes it possible to accomplish tasks like this in just a few minutes.
Not long after that, the team got wind of some contextual search technology that Reiner Kraft was building. Now, Reiner is one of our resident geniuses. When he was at IBM, there was a patent attorney who did little more than handle Reiner's inventions. MIT's Technology Review even included him in their TR 100, a list of technology innovators under the age of 35.
Reiner had realized that the current method of searching isn't always the most efficent way to get what you're after. Most people aren't skilled in the art of choosing exactly which keywords to use when searching.
Reiner's technology was designed to help eliminate that problem. The fundamental idea was to supplement search queries with context. So instead of having to spend a lot of time searching and assembling all the information you're after, this contextual search technology could incorporate that context (the stuff you were reading at you moment you decided that you wanted to know more) to find the most relevant results.
The team had a look at what Reiner was doing and immediately realized that it could be used to meet Jeff's challenge. They asked for a few tweaks and two days later, Reiner had a working prototype. Excited by what they saw, the team asked what it'd take to turn it into a full-blown service. In no time Reiner had the help of some of our best product and engineering folks, as well as one of our DHTML wizards.
What they built is Y!Q, which puts search right where you need it and incorporates the context of your searches. Y!Q is a cool DHTML module that embeds contextual search directly into a web page. We're showcasing it in a test environment on Yahoo! News, but any web publisher can embedY!Q into their content (that embedding process is currently a bit klunky, but we're working on that).
Y!Q is also available through the Y!Q DemoBar, an Internet Explorer toolbar that brings Y!Q's contextual search functionality to any web page. Simply highlight some related text on the page you're reading and then perform a search.
If you're a Firefox user like me, don't worry. You can also add Y!Q to Firefox.
In each implementation, Y!Q uses the context to help bridge the gap between query and intent. This should help turn some of those 30 minute affairs into the 2-3 minute tasks they ought to be.
Give Y!Q a try and let us know what you think. It is a beta product right now, so we'll likely be tweaking things in the near future.
Jeremy
Zawodny
Yahoo! Search
P.S. If you're wondering about the name, it's play on "IQ". Knowledge often comes from combining information with the relevant context, so it seemed like an appropriate name.
Y!Q: Adding Context to Search
Every time we launch a new service, someone asks where the idea came from and why we did it. There's a good story behind this one, so I thought I'd write it up here.
A bit over a year ago, Jeff ran across a story on Yahoo! News about the #1 song in the UK during the Christmas holiday. It was the Gary Jules remake of the Tears for Fears song Mad World. This caught his interest and he wanted to know more.
Why is this song so popular? Where can I hear it? Is there a video? Can I buy it?
He spent the next 30 minutes searching for answers to those questions and more.
It turns out that the song's popularity had a lot to do with the movie Donnie Darko. The movie became a cult hit and the song was on the soundtrack.
But I digress..
As a result of this experience, he posed a challenge to the Yahoo! Search team: to build technology that makes it possible to accomplish tasks like this in just a few minutes.
Not long after that, the team got wind of some contextual search technology that Reiner Kraft was building. Now, Reiner is one of our resident geniuses. When he was at IBM, there was a patent attorney who did little more than handle Reiner's inventions. MIT's Technology Review even included him in their TR 100, a list of technology innovators under the age of 35.
Reiner had realized that the current method of searching isn't always the most efficient way to get what you're after. Most people aren't skilled in the art of choosing exactly which keywords to use when searching.
Reiner's technology was designed to help eliminate that problem. The fundamental idea was to supplement search queries with context. So instead of having to spend a lot of time searching and assembling all the information you're after, this contextual search technology could incorporate that context (the stuff you were reading at you moment you decided that you wanted to know more) to find the most relevant results.
The team had a look at what Reiner was doing and immediately realized that it could be used to meet Jeff's challenge. They asked for a few tweaks and two days later, Reiner had a working prototype. Excited by what they saw, the team asked what it'd take to turn it into a full-blown service. In no time Reiner had the help of some of our best product and engineering folks, as well as one of our DHTML wizards.
What they built is Y!Q, which puts search right where you need it and incorporates the context of your searches. Y!Q is a cool DHTML module that embeds contextual search directly into a web page. We're showcasing it in a test environment on Yahoo! News, but any web publisher can embedY!Q into their content (that embedding process is currently a bit klunky, but we're working on that).
Y!Q is also available through the Y!Q DemoBar, an Internet Explorer toolbar that brings Y!Q's contextual search functionality to any web page. Simply highlight some related text on the page you're reading and then perform a search.
If you're a Firefox user like me, don't worry. You can also add Y!Q to Firefox.
In each implementation, Y!Q uses the context to help bridge the gap between query and intent. This should help turn some of those 30 minute affairs into the 2-3 minute tasks they ought to be.
Give Y!Q a try and let us know what you think. It is a beta product right now, so we'll likely be tweaking things in the near future.
Jeremy Zawodny
Yahoo! Search
P.S. If you're wondering about the name, it's play on "IQ". Knowledge often comes from combining information with the relevant context, so it seemed like an appropriate name.