Yahoo! Launches Yahoo! Q

Yahoo! launches Yahoo! Q, which shows contextually relevant news and links in a small pop up box next to content.

"The thinking is that if you can read an article, you can be inspired to search," said Ken Norton, senior director of product management at Yahoo search. "We're bringing search to the moment of inspiration... We'll save them time and energy, and the most relevant search." source: MarketWatch

A couple weeks ago Jakob Neilson talked about using fat links (or smart links which offered multiple options or opened multiple windows when clicked). This is the first implimention of the concept I have seen by any major web players.

There are two major modes for Yahoo! Q:

1. Webmasters can add the Yahoo! Q code to their pages... I will be doing that shortly just to test it out.

2. Users can download the Yahoo! Q DemoBar or add extensions to FireFox.

Eventually Yahoo! may integrate ads into their Q boxes, but off the start they are primarily hoping to improve search usage. The fact that FireFox is part of the beta release means that Yahoo! is really starting to create products which the web community will help market for them.

I have not tested it much, but is sure sounds like cool stuff.

PostScript: I installed Yahoo! Q on all my individual post pages. It was easy to install, but I am kinda tired.

I few things I do not like about it...

• the Yahoo! Search blog has not yet installed Yahoo! Q. What is up with that? ;)

• It slightly messed up my template. Not sure if I am at fault or it is at fault.
• It requires me to pop the form element up within the content tags when I would have prefered to have it lower...like near all the other search engine links. currently if I do that it might place too much weight on the post title
• Since many of the highlights will be at the bottom of the screen it will require the user to scroll down to see the Q box. Perhaps they could find a way to ensure a large portion of it fits on the screen?
• Jeremy stated that they are working on the clunkiness problem.

The technology is a fairly cool idea and should be amazingly useful for community driven sites.