In order to remain popular services need to be upgraded and offer some new features from time to time. Several companies like Google understand this perfectly and struggle to offer new stuff on a monthly basis even. Yahoo is also aiming to make things a little more interesting for its readers and has launched the ‘infinite browser’. According to PCMag, the new feature which is now being tested on Yahoo News will add a small window of search results at the end of an article. The window will include results on the topics found within the news story.
The idea behind this is simple. If you’re interested in certain news, you might also be interested in other information regarding the topic as well as other articles. With the help of the infinite browser users are thus encouraged to discover new content and keep searching through Yahoo’s network. Yahoo executives referred to this as ‘search by clicking’ in an event taking place in February.
“These modules might look simple, but they harness an array of Yahoo! technologies and search sciences to complement the work of editors at Yahoo! News,” Caroline Tsay, director of product management, and Marc Davis, a product manager, wrote in a blog post. Both work for Yahoo Search. “In its first week, our internal data indicates that user engagement with this related search information in Yahoo! News is nearly twice the amount we see with similar features. We will be rolling this out to all users as soon as it is ready.”
The infinite browser window will add additional search terms and results below news stories, as mentioned before and users will be able to look at other news featuring any of the popular terms used in the news they are currently reading. For example, if the news is about Al Quaida, in the box below the news, users will be able to find links to other Al-Quaida related topics such as ‘Al-Quaida Camp’ or ‘Al-Quaida Flags’. The Internet company has also added a ‘trending now’ list of hot topics for a number of sites which include the Yahoo.com homepage, Yahoo News, Yahoo Sports or Yahoo Mail. If users select a specific topic they will be ported to a page that is designed strictly about that certain topic.
The feature is currently being tested on a limited group of users and was designed to boost the search query volume through automated searches.
I think this is a great idea which creates continuity for people interested in a particular subject. I can’t wait to test it. For people like me that work in the research business, this tool is actually gold and it will help us find information a lot easier. Maybe Google should have this initiative as well as I know they have a much larger website database and they are entitles to display tons more information.