Some blinkered marketing pundits have likened the launch of Yahoo’s Answers service to a comeback of Ask’s butlerYahoo! Answers – More than a butler’s return.
Some blinkered marketing pundits have likened the launch of Yahoo’s Answers service to a comeback of Ask’s butler - expecting to see search queries in Yahoo! expressed in the form of “How do I get candle wax from a rug?”
Well according to 
Richard Wray, posting on Guardian Unlimited:
“the endgame could be to include data from Yahoo! Answers in search results generated by the company’s main search engine”
However, Stephen Taylor of Yahoo is more cautious and emphasizes that this is the:
“biggest product launch Yahoo! have done in years and another step in bringing their internet search and social search closer together”
Those that liken this to Ask’s old butler are miles wide of the mark. The butler was simply a technique to make search accessible, so that novice searchers could enter their queries in conversational English. The results were still based upon the processing of Ask’s search algorithm and drawn from the taxonomy index created by Ask - i.e. what Ask think about the importance and relevance of a web-site and their choice of tagging / indexing.
Yahoo! Are building a pool of real experts (people) who answer questions and the results are then rated by questioners (more people). This is called a folksonomy – where you, me, my mum and her dog (he’s well trained) rate and tag the results we see.
When they get incorporated into mainstream search along with algorithmic processing, then search reaches a new level - the results should be more focused, personal, interesting and relevant.
Man and machine in harmony is a powerful combination.
