Yahoo! Answers

Since we first made changes to the Search experience on Answers in March we have received extensive feedback from the Answers community.  We’re pleased to say we’ve been incorporating this feedback in developing some exciting new changes to how Search works – with some cool new functions to help you get the best out of this feature which we will be unveiling later this week.

However, before you can see the future of Search on Answers, we need to take you back to the past… just for a few days!  For Technical reasons we have to rollback to an older version of the Search page before we can add code to introduce new features – it’s a bit like when the Yamster’s wheel gets stuck.  We have to roll it back a little before it can go forward again!

As from Monday we’ll be using the old URL structure on Search pages.

Here are the impacts and how you can work around this until we get the new page live:

1) If you’ve bookmarked your Searches you will get the error page as the URL will no longer be valid. In the interim you will need to go to the Search page and enter your search again.  This will return you the full set of results.

2) If you currently edit the Search URL to use &orderby=+date (to sort by most recent) and &orderby=-date (to sort by oldest) you will need to use the previous parameters.  These are:

• Instead of &orderby=+date use &s=+date
• Instead of &orderby=-date use &s=-date

We are sorry for the inconvenience this may cause, but we can assure you it will be very temporary and that you will really value the new Search functions we’re launching in a few days!

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You will notice a cool new Yahoo! Answers feature that will allow you to share your Answers content with your Facebook friends! This means your friends on Facebook can now help you answer your questions if you choose to share them. Your Facebook friends can also join Yahoo! Answers and connect with our amazing community to have the many questions they have answered.

What are the benefits?

One of the many advantages of social networking sites is having the ability to connect with thousands of people.   Linking your Answers account with your Facebook account increases the number of people that can answer your questions!  Some of the benefits are:

1. Make it easier for your non-Answers friends to answer your questions if you choose to share them beyond Answers
2. If you choose to share your great answers with your Facebook friends too then they will see your answers right at the top of the list when coming to Answers from Facebook

Control options:

On the `Preview` page you’ll see the check-boxes for where you want to share your questions and answers to.  The setting you choose here will be the default for all of your content but you have the option to change this with every posting.  This gives you full control over which info you want to share with your friends and those questions you want to ask only to the Answers community.

Things to keep in mind:

If you do decide to share your Answers activity with your friends on Facebook, keep in mind that your Answers screen name will be visible.  Your Answers activity will be associated with your Facebook identity and vice versa, which means your Facebook friends will be able to see all your Answers activity (including past activity).   If your friends on Facebook ‘like’ your question, their contacts will be able to see this activity too.

Remember, more visibility to your questions means more answers from a wider range of contacts so we hope you will find the new Facebook integration a useful addition to your Answers experience!

Once you have started sharing your Answers and Facebook accounts, “tell us what you think” on the Forum or leave your comments here, on the blog.

–Yahoo! Answers Team

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We are pleased to introduce a cool new way to help you stay on top of your Yahoo! Answers activity wherever you are on the web – this is the Answers app for the Yahoo! Toolbar.

From now on, if a question suddenly pops into your head there is no need to navigate away from the page you are on – just click on the Answers app on your Yahoo! Toolbar and ask the Answers community directly and instantly!

Many of you may already be familiar with the Yahoo! Toolbar, which is a great way to make your surfing experience more efficient and streamlined by keeping all the information you need in a single click. If you haven’t yet experienced the benefits then download the Yahoo! Toolbar now and enhance your Internet experience by:
• Reducing the time needed to load various sites.
• Getting instant access to your Yahoo! account and other properties by just clicking a button.
• Getting instant access to Yahoo!’s powerful search engine.

What exactly is the Answers app?

Here is a quick walkthrough of the new Answers app:

1-App icon
The App icon lets you navigate directly to Answers at the click of a button, preview your activity, and ask questions without leaving the page you’re on.

2-App module
The App module provides 3 tabs for you to easily manage and check your favorite Yahoo! Answers content.

My Activity tab: Shows the last 5 questions/answers you asked along with your latest points tally.

Ask tab: Let’s you dive straight into asking questions directly from the module.

Browse tab: See the latest questions asked or browse to your favorite categories using the list.

3- Related Links
The Related links section takes you directly to the relevant sections on the Answers site.

4 – Search Answers
We’ve included a Search box to get quick access to the information you are looking for.

Tell us what you think
Once you have given the new Answers app a test drive, tell us what you think on the Forum or leave your comments here, on the blog.

We trust you will find the Yahoo! Toolbar and the Answers app to be a useful addition to your Answers experience!

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Photo by Rasmin

This week Yahoo! Answers reached an important milestone – we received our 1 billionth answer!

From the small beginnings when we received our first answer from the public back in December 2005 we have now become the largest and most popular global Q&A site on the internet, available in 9 languages across 21 countries.

The volume of contributions we receive from the Answers community on a daily basis is mindboggling.  Yahoo! Answers currently receives:

823,966 questions and answers per day…

that works out to 34,331 per hour or 572 per minute

which is 10 questions and answers posted EVERY second!

The first answer on Answers

It’s difficult to pinpoint the first answer to the first question once Answers was opened to the public, but one of the first-ever answers came to this question -“Why are yawns contagious?”

This was one of many questions you’ve always wanted to know the answer to, but didn’t know how to find – until Yahoo! Answers came along.

The most answered questions of all time…

Through the years, we have had numerous celebrities and leading political figures appear on Yahoo! Answers.  Their questions have proven to be overwhelmingly popular with the community due to the large numbers of answers received.

Here’s a rundown of some of the biggest:

• The most popular question ever was from Hillary Clinton who received over 38,000 answers to her question: “Based on your own family’s experience, what do you think we should do to improve health care in America?”.

• This is closely followed by Oprah Winfrey’s question with over 37,000 responses

• During the 2008 US election campaign, President Barack Obama sought the wisdom of the Answers community to ask “how can we engage more people in the democratic process?”.  He received nearly 18,000 answers.

• As part of the ONE campaign to Make Poverty History, Bono took the time to select David C’s response as the best answer to his question, What can we do to make poverty history?, from the 29,458 received.

The quirkiest questions of all time…

The following are some of the most interesting and original questions that our Answers community has asked:

• What numbers and letters do you key on you keyboard to make a heart symbol?

• Is eating the inside of an orange peel good for you?

• How far east can you go before you’re heading west?

Drum roll…

The honor of providing the 1 BILLIONTH answer on Yahoo! Answers goes to cgramer2 (for their excellent response to this question: What laptop part can I replace to speed up my pc?

Thank you cgramer2 and THANK YOU Answers Community.  It is you all who have made this site such a phenomenal place where information can be exchanged and opinions heard.  Thanks to our amazing community for making this milestone happen!

So, if you ever have a question?  Yahoo! has an answer… over one billion of them!

—YAT

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Following our changes to the Search experience on Answers last week we received a lot of feedback from you, the community, around the changes we made.

Advanced search changes

We’ve reacted to your feedback to make a few additional changes that now allow you to add parameters to the URL, to allow you to better sort your search result. In order to do this, here are the bits of code you’ll need to add to the end of your URL to sort your results:

&orderby=+date (to sort by most recent)

&orderby=-date (to sort by oldest)

For example a search for “dogs” produces this URL: http://answers.yahoo.com/search/search_result?p=dogs

If you want to sort by the most recent results, simply add “&orderby=+date” to the end of the URL:  http://answers.yahoo.com/search/search_result?p=dogs&orderby=+date

We will look to add these filters within the page itself over the coming months.

In addition, we heard from the community that search terms within quotation marks (”and”) were returning no results.  We’ve adjusted the system so that this no longer is the case, and “and” now produces results.

Additional changes

Last but not least, we’ve also taken this opportunity to fix some other bugs on the site:

• For Internet Explorer users we’ve fixed the layout issue on the Ask/Answer/Discover banner
• We have also made changes to content deletion.  Previously, when you deleted your question or answer, it was still showing in the public view of your profile page.  From now on when you delete a question or answer, it will be entirely removed from your public profile page

Thanks for your continued feedback on our latest release, and, for helping to improve Yahoo! Answers!

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