Future Yahoo searches will give more control to shoppers
While a new shopping search engine debuted last week by Yahoo bases its search results on what Yahoo perceives as customer relevance rather than on what online retailers are paying Yahoo for traffic, customers may have even more control over search results in future Yahoo searches, the company tells Internet Retailer.
The current search engine ranks products based on past popularity and includes products from both retailers that pay Yahoo for referrals and those that don`t. Customers can sort those results by price category.
However, a feature in beta test lets customers define even more what they believe is relevant to their search. For example, in a beta test, customers asking for digital cameras can dig further into the data by clicking on the "optimize comparison" button. This allows them to rank the importance of certain features including price, speed, resolution, optical zoom, brand and size. Based on their answers, Yahoo will come back with different rankings of products.
Bill Rowley, Yahoo director of business development, says the company expects to have a limited number of electronic products with this feature by the holidays, then expand the functionality to appliances and other product categories.
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