Yahoo mindset is an intent driven search that allows users to dynamically change the result set of a search depending on their intent. The current scale is between the two “intents” commercial and research.
Yahoo’s concept of intent driven search provides a pretty useful customer experience, but the hidden goldmine IMHO is market research. If yahoo is an advertising company more than a search company then asking users if they’re “buying” when they’re doing a search is killer market research. It’s the age old retail strategy of “what is your time frame for this purchase” or more bluntly “are you ready to buy”, “let me go and talk to my manager and see if we can get you a deal TODAY”. It could open the door to differential pricing for advertisers who pay more for “shopping” orientated search than research, or even time limited offers being shown to people who are “shopping”.
Here’s a picture of the scale that users can futz with to change their results:
And here’s a view of the search results based upon my more “research” oriented intent.
From a technical standpoint, yahoo’s taken a leaf out of google’s book and is getting on the AJAX bandwagon and it makes for a pretty seemless experience, as you move the slider the search results change without another page loading.
More about it at the yahoo blog:
Yahoo! Search blog: Yahoo! Research Labs Releases Yahoo! Mindset
Marketing vox: ‘Yahoo Mindset’ Search Results Reflect Searcher Intent
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