Can Yahoo Structured Search Beat Google?

In an effort to stand out (and then beat) Google, Yahoo may soon be rolling out a structured search for particular keywords, which would give a more informative set of results than just links to websites containing relevant information.

While very few details have been released about this possible new search setup, one example given is for the search term “mobile phones.” This could return a set of results that offer drop down menus for manufacturer information, brands, technologies, prices and stores. Based on your selections from the drop down menus, your search query will become further tailored to your specific needs.

It’s more of a custom search that borrows some ideas from many that are striving to achieve semantic search, from Grayboxx to Mahalo and Twine. If you look at the basics of what Yahoo is proposing, it appears to be most similar to Grayboxx and Krillion, where users search for certain terms and get a set of results that can be narrowed down for products. Obviously this search setup is more inclined to work better for e-commerce product searches, from a structured level. And it builds on concepts that Yahoo’s been toying with for some time, including the promotion of Yahoo Store search results being included in a pertinent search, or its recent push for an improved Yahoo Local.

So could this in fact help Yahoo differentiate itself from Google, by bringing more value to end users? The idea is useful, especially for those masses of users that aren’t terribly accustomed to online search. But it probably won’t make much of a dent in Google’s dominant market share. Especially after buckling yesterday during Cyber Monday shopping. Ask.com has also been tweaking its search tools in order to offer a broader set of results, giving you song clips and videos that play directly from your query page, and other results that speak towards a structured semantic search as well.

[via macworld]

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