[Sigia-l] Search and classification

[Christina Wodtke]

I've been trying to stay out of this, because almost everything I know these
days is NDA'd to death... but if you compare limited domain search with web
search you are making a huge mistake. Search's use is highly contextual and
any speculation about the nature of search and browse based on a single case
of what one company chooses to do-- or worse, some (often inaccurate) news
articles -- is foolish.

Take a longer look at Yahoo-- web search is absolutely key to Yahoo's
offerings, but so is free mail... and news, and finance and so on. To
attribute Yahoo's success to just search or just browse hierarchies is
myopic.

Do an inventory of all of Yahoo's properties.. some have search, some do
not. Some need search, some do not. And, of course, there are probably a few
that have search and don't need it, or need it and don't have it.

But better yet, learn about your *own* users and what they need from your
site, then give it to them.

Christina Wodtke
Design Manager
Yahoo! Search