Don`t Let Your Visitors Get Lost in the Avalanche - Help Them Find it: Yahoo Pipes
(Page 2 of 4 )
You may or may not be in charge of a scientific web site. But either way, you face the same issue: how do you make your site more visible? Well, one way to do it is to help your visitors find whatever they're looking for. Despite appearances, the search engines do not have a total lock on that little trick; indeed, some of them make very nice tools that can assist you in this task.
Take Yahoo, for example. In February it released something that looks truly original; sadly, they weren't exactly trumpeting it from the rooftops, so I only heard about it recently. It's called Yahoo Pipes, and if you know anything about the pipe (|) command in Unix, you already understand conceptually what it does. I don't have the room to do a full review in this article, but I may do one later if there is interest.
Yahoo's overview says that Pipes "is a free online service that lets you remix popular feed types and create data mashups using a visual editor. You can use Pipes to run your own web projects, or publish and share your own web services without ever having to write a line of code." What does this mean exactly? Basically, you can take a number of web feeds, RSS feeds, or other sources of online information, run them through several programs in order (Pipes calls them "modules") and get the results - yes, just like the pipe command in Unix lets you take one program, run it, then put the results into another program and run it.
At this time of writing, Yahoo offers almost 30 Pipes modules that can be strung together in various orders. Users string the pre-configured modules together onto a canvas, "wiring" them together in the Pipes editor. It's a very visual, drag-and-drop interface. It's even pretty, which probably goes a long way toward making it fun to use (and easier for users to stick with, playing around until they have a Pipe that does exactly what they want).
By themselves, Pipes can be great time savers for aggregating only the information you want. But Pipes come with social options. Sure, they're on Yahoo's server, and you call them as you would any other feed. But you can also publish them and share them with the world. Visitors to Yahoo's Pipes site can browse Pipes; each one is listed with its name, author, date of publication, and how many times it has been run.
The list is well worth browsing; Pipe authors have been very creative. It's not just news they aggregate; how about eBay items in a particular price range, or apartments near schools for those with families? Think about your web site, and you'll probably be able to create a Pipe with the needs of your visitors in mind.
Next: Google CSE: Another Approach >>
More Search Optimization Articles
More By Terri Wells
/ 4 
