Yahoo Integrating del.icio.us Bookmarks into Search Results
Written by Derek Edmond on January 21st, 2008Last Friday, Techcrunch posted an announcement that Yahoo would be testing and integrating del.icio.us social bookmarking numbers directly into certain search results.
In addition to the traditional information users see (titles, search descriptions, URL etc), searchers may also see the number of people that bookmarked any given page and what tags they used to “describe” that page.
I’ve been a strong proponent of del.icio.us for quite a while but often neglected the “social” aspects of the tool in favor of other social news and bookmarking services (Digg, StumbleUpon, etc). If this move proves successful, it could become a major reason to use del.icio.us for more than just a personal bookmarking tool.
Here are some immediate impacts that this type of integration may lead to:
- Improved click thru rates for highly bookmarked pages
- Alternative ways for users to search for topically relevant information
- Broader adoption of del.icio.us as a bookmarking tool/service
- If this does prove to be successful, the right spam filters and detection systems must be put in place to eliminate as much social bookmark gaming as possible.
The Long-Term Effects
On a larger scale, this search enhancement provides concrete evidence to the fact that user generated content is (at least) being analyzed and evaluated for search engine rankings. While many search marketers have realized this already, there is (to the best of my knowledge) little documentation proving this to be true on a broader scale. Even with Google’s original announcement of Universal Search, it has been difficult to assess why specific search queries would trigger blended search results.
Here are links to articles and opinions on this topic:
