A new beta tool launched by Yahoo Research Labs this week gives searchers more control over the way search results are sorted with the slide of a bar. One end of the bar is commercial sites and at the other end, informational sites.
Yahoo ranked the sites from the most commercial (-2 points) to most informational (+2), but be careful, the rankings system may need some fine-tuning since the criteria is still a bit fuzzy. A score of zero means the site has a balance of commercial and informational material. The filtering system works for the top 100 results.
Search engine analyst Andy Beal, stated "Mindset is the beginning of something new. Yahoo Mindset is a great first step in fully understanding the intent of a user"s entered search."
But Yahoo has cautioned that the feature is still in its early beta stages.
"When using Mindset, please bear in mind it"s not a finished product. We think of it more as a technology demo and an ongoing research project. We want to determine whether: a) the underlying technology is effective and b) you like it," writes Bernard Mangold, the senior director of Yahoo! Research Labs, in their Blog