Yahoo has launched a new visualization tool that offers some insights into how it chooses what content to show on the Yahoo home page and other properties.
The data comes from Yahoo’s CORE (which stands for Content Optimization and Relevance Engine) and is converted into an online visual tool can be seen here.
The data sheds insight not only to what other people are watching, but also what kind of information advertisers look at when they target consumers.
CORE launched in 2008, but this is the first time the internet giant has revealed the stats behind the engine.
Visitors to the new CORE data visiualisation site can see what content is shown to people of different genders, ages and major American cities. They can also scan through the past 24 hours, and it features a real-time counter of the number of views of Yahoo’s home page on a particular day.
Since Yahoo launched CORE on the homepage, its clickthrough rates have increased 300%.Yahoo says its users click on the “Today” module on Yahoo’s home page four times more often than before, and more than a billion times per month.
Yahoo said that CORE processes 1.2 terabytes of user data every hour. That’s the equivalent of 644 million printed pages every hour. On a daily basis, CORE manages to provide 2.2 billion pieces of personalised content to viewers.
Yahoo explains the C.O.R.E. algorithm and how content is selected for display on Yahoo properties:
“Today, C.O.R.E. powers content on many Yahoo! properties, including Yahoo! News and the Today Module. There, editors write and gather the most important and engaging stories of the day, and C.O.R.E. determines how stories should be ordered, dependent on each user.
“Similarly, C.O.R.E. figures out which story categories (i.e. technology, health, finance, or entertainment) should be displayed prominently on the page to help deepen engagement for each viewer.”
But it’s not all algorithmic; Yahoo’s blog post explains that manual action was taken when Osama bin Laden died to make sure that news appeared to all Yahoo users.
Yahoo has a similar visualization tool for Yahoo Mail.
http://visualize.yahoo.com/core/
