By David Utter
Expert Author
Article Date: 2005-09-21
Now, the search engine algorithm used by Yahoo attempts to determine the most-used information about a search topic.
The recent update at Yahoo's Search blog notes how one Yahoo! Search product manager demonstrated a new feature and helped a person get where he wanted to go. A man in line at a local Starbucks had lost his written directions to a local restaurant.
Kalpana Ravinarayanan posted about the opportunity to use Yahoo! Search to find the address of that restaurant, and send those directions from the browser to the man's mobile phone via a Send To Phone link on the search result page:
"So not only did it take me just one search to get the address and phone number, but now he has the listing and directions right on his cell phone ... :)
What was that? It is a new feature in our abstract generating algorithm that tries to guess the most used information about that page, and promotes it into the summaries for search results."
In this case, one of the most used pieces of information was the Send To Phone feature in Yahoo! Local. That feature was included in the summary of the search, along with the address and phone number for the restaurant. And everyone lived happily ever after.
