まとめてウォッチ！

The Yahoo! Search engineering teams are rolling out updates to crawling, indexing, and ranking algorithms.  Similar to previous updates, you may notice some ranking changes and page shuffling during the process, which we expect to complete over the next few days.

To share your thoughts on this latest update, please visit the Site Explorer Suggestion Board.

Dan Rampton
Program Manager, Yahoo! Search

Last week, we introduced you to some great search features to keep up with the 82^nd Academy Awards. The coveted statuettes have been distributed and the post-show analysis is in full swing!

The buzziest acceptance speeches of the evening:  Sandra Bullock and  Mo’Nique – although the story behind Elinor Burkett and her so-called “hijacked” acceptance speech blazed a path through search logs on Monday.

Best Motion Picture contender that is the most anticipated DVD in search: The Blind Side, followed by Avatar, Precious, and The Hurt Locker.

The buzz, of course, is never simply about who won.  One of our favorite ways to explore major events is to check out the questions they inspired in search.  One standout: “Are the Oscars the same as the Academy Awards?”  (Why, yes!)

A sampling of notable Oscar 2010 search questions:

• Who won Best Actress? – the biggest award category in search questions
• Has Meryl Streep ever won an Oscar?
• What does Hurt Locker mean? – a big theme in search, coupled with “What is The Hurt Locker about?”
• How tall is Kathryn Bigelow?
• Are Maggie Gyllenhaal and Jake Gyllenhaal related?
• Who votes for the Oscars?

Check out The Buzz Log for more Oscar search trends and buzzing topics, courtesy of our friends at Yahoo! Buzz.

Andrea Sandke

Yahoo! Search

We had a great time at the SMX West conference this past week in Santa Clara, CA. Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer kicked things off with his keynote speech, where he addressed several questions on the Yahoo! and Microsoft Search Alliance. Yahoo! participated in several different panels throughout the week, including Thursday’s keynote “The State off the Search Union” roundtable featuring David Roth, Director of Search Engine Marketing. (You can check out the full recap of this at Search Engine Land’s live-blog post.)

One of the hot topics discussed was real-time search, and I had the pleasure of sitting on a panel about that subject, titled “Real Time Search & the Major Search Engines.” Among other things, we discussed the real-time features we’ve rolled out for Yahoo! Search, like tweets in Yahoo! search results and getting the freshest information on developing news as well as some of the challenges and opportunities in this space.

In our down time I visited Yahoo!’s popular booth on the show floor – everyone loved our free coffee! Check out some of the highlights in the video below.

Ivan Davtchev

Yahoo! Search

Continuing our celebration of the Academy Awards, we are rolling out a series of features that make it easier for you to follow coverage of the Oscars on Yahoo! Search.

On Yahoo! Image Search, just search for “Oscars 2010” and you’ll see our Oscars image carousel, with the latest image search results of the nominees and photos of the event. While counting down to the big night, you can easily search for snapshots from the film Inglourious Basterds or photos of nominees like Meryl Streep. You’ll see Oscars-related image results for these films and actors in the Oscars image refiner on the left hand side of the page. On Oscar night, use Yahoo! Image Search to see Penelope Cruz’s gown, George Clooney’s always-dapper suit, and other best- and worst-dressed celebs as they make their way down the red carpet.

This year, we are also giving you a quick and easy way to see the list of nominees and winners from the Web search results page. To see the nominees, just search for “Oscars” or “Academy Awards” on Yahoo! Search and you’ll see a list of nomination categories for the awards. Simply click any of the categories to see the full list of nominees.  We’ll be updating the results as soon as the winners are announced on Sunday night, so you can use the same queries and see the list of winners directly on the search results page.

Want more? We have video coverage of the Oscars too! If you didn’t catch the nominated flicks in the theater, check out the trailers of the nominated films on Yahoo! Video Search. Search for “Oscars” on Yahoo! Video Search and you’ll see that we’ve categorized the trailers on the left hand side of the page by award categories, actor interviews, speeches, and more. After the Oscars, search for the names of the winners to find updates results.

With these new ways of exploring the Academy Awards, we hope you enjoy your “front row” access to the Oscars coverage from beginning to end!

Yahoo! Search, Yahoo! Image Search, and Yahoo! Video Search Teams

The 2010 SMX West conference kicks off this week in Santa Clara, Calif., and we’re excited to be there! Yahoos will be sitting on a handful of panels, so stop by and learn what we’re up to.

Tuesday, March 2, 2010

Time: 9:45 a.m. – 10:45 a.m.
Panel: Real Time Search & The Major Search Engines
Speaker: Ivan Davtchev, Senior Product Manager, Yahoo! Search

Wednesday, March 3, 2010

Time: 1:30 p.m. – 2:45 p.m.
Panel: Search Meets Display, Display Meets Search
Speaker: David Oliveira, Regional Vice President Sales, Yahoo!

Time: 4:45 p.m. – 6 p.m.
Panel: Ask The Paid Search Reps
Speaker: Tomaso Pozzi, Product Manager, Yahoo!

Thursday, March 4, 2010

Time: 9 a.m. – 9:45 a.m.
Panel: Keynote – The State Of The Search Union
Speaker: David Roth, Director of Search Engine Marketing, Yahoo! Inc.

Time: 10 a.m. – 11:15 a.m.
Panel: Bringing SEO In House: How To Be Successful!
Speaker: Laura Lippay, Director of Technical Marketing, Yahoo!

Time: 11:30 a.m. – 12:30 p.m.
Panel: Ask The Search Engines
Speaker: Arnab Bhattacharjee, Senior Director, Yahoo! Search Technology and Engineering, Yahoo!

We’re looking forward to seeing you there!

Yahoo! Search Team

巷で話題のZen Coding。emacs 版もあるようなので、Mac のCarbon Emacsに入れてみた。今までスニペット機能は、emacs + snippet.el を使っていましたが、この動画を見ると（YouTube - Emacs with HTML, Zencoding and YASnippet）、そういうのは YASnippet 使えという雰囲気なので、ついでに YASnippet に切り替えてみた。

• zen-coding - Project Hosting on Google Code

まずは、zencoding.elをインストール。

• EmacsWiki: Zen Coding

上記のページから、zencoding-mode.elを取得して、load-path を通しているフォルダに配置。emacsの設定ファイル（.emacs.el ）に以下を追加するだけ。キーバインドは Ctr-z に変更しています。

;; Zen Coding Mode

(require 'zencoding-mode)

(add-hook 'sgml-mode-hook 'zencoding-mode)

(add-hook 'html-mode-hook 'zencoding-mode)

(add-hook 'text-mode-hook 'zencoding-mode)

(define-key zencoding-mode-keymap "\C-z" 'zencoding-expand-line)

ただし、この emacs 版はAbbre的な部分のみの実装していて、ZenHTMLElements みたな派手な補完には対応していないよう。あと、スニペット補完後のカーソルの位置が、あまり使いやすくない。Zen Codingのミソは、Snippetの内容を様々なエディタで共有できることだと思うので、そのあたりは今後のzencoding-mode.el の進化に期待というところでしょうか。とりあえず今のところは YASnippet で。

• yasnippet - Project Hosting on Google Code

Bundle版ではなく、カスタマイズが可能な通常版をインストールしました。ちなみにemacsの設定ファイルはDropboxにおいて、色々なMacでシェアしています。

;; Yasnippet
(add-to-list 'load-path "˜/Dropbox/emacs/yasnippet-0.6.1c")
(require 'yasnippet)
(yas/initialize)
(yas/load-directory "˜/Dropbox/emacs/yasnippet-0.6.1c/snippets")
(setq yas/prompt-functions '(yas/dropdown-prompt))

独自のスニペットの作成方法は以下のドキュメントで。

• Writing snippets

基本的には、M-x yas/new-snippet で編集モードを起動して、以下のような書式で独自のスニペットを作成する。作成している最中に、C-c C-t で動作テストをおこなえる。

# -*- mode: snippet -*-
# name: div h4
# key: div4
# --
<div class="section" id="$1">
  <h4>$2</h4>
  $0
</div> <!-- $1 -->

どのように記述するかは、 yasnippet-0.6.1c/snippets/text-mode/html-mode に既存のスニペットが沢山あるので、参考にすればよい。

なんだか、最終的にZen Codingをあまり使わない方法になっている気もしますがw、色々とすっきりしたのでよしとします。