Yahoo! gives us a clue

Brian Theodore, director of Search Products at Yahoo!, made an exciting announcement via the company’s blog last week, introducing their latest SEO feature ‘Yahoo! Clues’ to the world.

Yahoo! Clues is a new service that will enable website owners to access trending information for search terms that are relevant to their website, or rising in popularity, at the present time. The service will also allow comparison of these trends across various websites. The service is beta-based and described by Mr. Theodore as a ‘unique “behind the scenes” look into popular trends’.

Yahoo! Clues allows webmasters to search for trends via a series of outputs including volume charts, demographic graphs and geographical searches, as well as keyword input. The company is also experimenting with a feature called ‘Search Flow’. Still in its infancy, Search Flow will eventually aim to provide a unique insight into current search patterns, and predict probable search terms for users who have made certain queries.

The idea is not new, both Google and Twitter offer similar facilities which have helped boost their online businesses. However, it does open up a wealth of information for webmasters, who can now get a clearer picture of how their website is performing against key terms across several major search engines.

Although Google is the market leader, well-performing sites can still expect a significant percentage of traffic from Yahoo! and its competitors, so all information on these engines equates directly to power – the power to further optimise your website.