A new look for Group Search
If you’ve searched for a group today you may have noticed that things look a bit different. Today, we introduced the first phase of our new groups search solution which will help improve the “searchability” of groups. To try it yourself, just visit http://groups.yahoo.com and search for a group in the “Find a Group” search box.
This recent redesign was the result of feedback from users like you, and is the first step in a series of changes to search that will help you find the groups that are the most relevant and right for you.
Below, you’ll find a quick walkthrough of the most recent additions to group search, including new sorting options, updated group information, and quick links that enable you to “Join” a group, right from the search page.
(Want to take a closer look at any of the screenshots? Click to open the image in a new browser window.)
Search Box
At the top of every search page, you’ll now see a search box, allowing you to refine your search at any time, or, start a new groups search whenever you’re ready. We know that in the past having to scroll to the bottom of the page to do a second search was an annoyance and this takes away that pain.
Sort By
Beneath the search box, you’ll see a new feature called “Sort by.” Once you click on this, you’ll see that this feature allows you to sort search results by four options: Best match, Number of members, Age of group (Newest first), and, Age of group (Oldest first).
These new options allow you to customize your search options in a way that you couldn’t do before. We’re also working on improving the algorithm that computes the “Best match” option, but currently this displays groups in the same order as before.
Group Photos
With the old search, photos displayed on the right, and if a group didn’t have an image, there was an awkward void on the page where a photo should have been. In the new search results page, group photos appear on the left, and we’ve replaced missing photos with a temporary groups logo. Don’t worry—if your group doesn’t have an image, nothing has changed within your actual group. The only thing that has changed is the way your group displays within search. Don’t like the generic groups logo? Upload an image to your group and it will go away. ☺
Join This Group!
Beneath each group image you might have noticed that there’s a new blue hyperlink encouraging searchers to “Join This Group!” This link will take any interested member through the steps necessary to join your group. Many of you had mentioned that it was too hard for members to get from search results to the join page of your group, and we think this should cut down on the number of “lost” members.
Group Details
Previously, search results only told potential members and fellow moderators the number of members within your group, and whether or not your archives were public. Now, users will be able to see: current membership count, whether or not they can view the archive, the age of the group, and whether or not the group is moderated.
All of these features are currently available in all Yahoo! Groups searches (however, they’re not currently available when you’re browsing a group), so be sure to give them a try and let us know what you think! We’ll be sure to keep you updated on additional updates to search as they become available.
Melissa Daniels
Yahoo! Community Manager
Steve Cooke said,
April 9, 2009 @ 6:32 pm
The changes look worthwhile, but the most useful thing Yahoo! could do to improve the Groups service would be the introduction of a system for deleting the many thousands of dead/inactive groups.
Lots of groups are established by people who don’t have the sustained interest or the technical skills to maintain them. Consequently, they become overrun by spammers and there’s often no way of telling whether that’s the case until you’ve subscribed to the group and received its junk mail. In some groups nearly all the apparent subscribers are, in fact, ‘bouncing’ accounts or redundant email addresses, but they still show up in the membership numbers provided on the group homepage.
Let’s have a system whereby all group administrators are required to renew their group on an annual basis or have it closed down automatically. There could be a set number of reminders before the ultimate sanction is imposed, including a final warning that gets sent to all a group’s subscribers (sometimes the concern of group members is the only way to wake up a lazy administrator).
Jim Clunie said,
April 9, 2009 @ 6:34 pm
Tried it for a couple of subjects that I know a little about. My immediate impression was much, much more relevant results. The top results were active, on-topic and spam-free groups. All of the groups that I know and expected to come up were in the first three or so pages. Very happy with this behaviour and I hope Yahoo will commit to any necessary maintenance to keep it working this way.
Geneva Coats said,
April 9, 2009 @ 6:58 pm
I did a search for “Pomeranians”.
My group “Pomforum” (with 659 members) did not appear ANYWHERE In the pages of listings.
The words “Pomeranian” and “Pomeranians” are both listed in the group description.
Very frustrating.
Also the bouncing members should not count when the membership is listed, and as the other gentleman said, dead groups should be removed.
thanks
Geneva
Lisa said,
April 9, 2009 @ 7:02 pm
keep getting this messsage when trying to join a group
We’re Sorry…
We are unable to complete your request at this time. We are aware of this problem and are working on a resolution. (code -9997)
If you continue to receive this error for more than 48 hours, please contact our Customer Care team. We apologize for this inconvenience.
Don Libes said,
April 9, 2009 @ 7:26 pm
It’s a significant improvement, thanks! But the member counts are wrong. I get the impression that the member counts returned by the search page are old. Is there a reason why you aren’t using a common database? Too much contention?
One suggestion for improvement: Show (with highlighting) the part of the group name or description or whatever it was that matched. I’m seeing some groups return that don’t have any apparent connection to my search string. It sure would be helpful to understand why they matched.
Dave Arnold said,
April 9, 2009 @ 8:03 pm
I agree with Lise. I too got the msg that “we are sorry but cannot complete your request at this time. What is going on. Why is this happening? Very frustating when you are trying to get through to something
Melissa Daniels said,
April 9, 2009 @ 8:14 pm
@Geneva Coats,
Hm– when I searched for pomeranians and sorted by member size (I saw your group was relatively large in size, so I wanted to narrow down my results) your group came up fourth: http://groups.yahoo.com/search?query=pomeranian&sort=members
Thanks for your feedback on the bouncing member suggestion/comment– I’ll be sure to pass that on.
-Melissa
Melissa Daniels said,
April 9, 2009 @ 8:25 pm
@Don Libes,
You can see an example of a match if you click on any of the screenshots above that have the Group Details showing– any portion that is bolded is a “matched term.” (For the example, I searched using the term “kitten” so any mention of the word “kitten” has been bolded.
Actually, we do, and are looking at improving this in future releases.
Currently, the Group Details/information is about 400 characters, but we search all of the group’s description, so sometimes the term you’re searching for (or that matched) doesn’t show in the Group Details snapshot.
As for member counts, the information reflected in search results is actually much more current than the numbers in old search results, and should be pretty close to accurate. (It’s possible that there are some discrepancies in high volume groups that add and delete members quickly). Nevertheless, I’ll be sure to pass on the feedback!
-Melissa
Bekah said,
April 9, 2009 @ 8:35 pm
Oh my thank you, thank you, thank you! My group, which has been continuously active since 1999 can be found! Before I couldn’t even find it by naming it – now I find it by category, name and key-word. Oh thank you. We are a reading group and got new members via other reading groups. Now we can get them from people searching for our kind of reading.
Did I say thank you?
Bekah
Melissa Daniels said,
April 9, 2009 @ 8:36 pm
@Lisa & @Dave
Thanks for reporting this– I’m having someone look into the issue! Hopefully they can get things back to tip top shape ASAP.
-Melissa
talal said,
April 9, 2009 @ 9:53 pm
nice idea . but as usual can not search by arabic and page as unicode as yahoo e mail . that is our problem in arabic groups , coding and not including arabicm, so if you can solve that, i will be thanks to you yahoo team.
RS said,
April 9, 2009 @ 10:04 pm
AWESOME!
Now add on more stat on the stat block:
Date of last post.
Then let us sort by that too.
Then dead groups stay buried. Win, no?
Sue in NJ said,
April 10, 2009 @ 5:04 am
My problem is, even though the bottom of the page may show more than one page of results, the other numbers and the Next box are *not* clickable to me using Firefox 2.0.0.2 running Windows 98 but the links to each of the groups *are*. When I switch to using MSIE 6.0, they are, but I hate that browser and because of my old OS and lack of HDD space can’t upgrade, so I really don’t want to use that browser if at all possible.
I do have both Java and Javascript enabled in Firefox. Any suggestions?
Scott said,
April 10, 2009 @ 5:17 am
Was all set to cheer this. Looks good but i did several variations on searches for groups i KNOW exist, including searches for the exact titles of the groups and they still didn’t come up, so i’m not impressed.
Kandy Newton said,
April 10, 2009 @ 5:19 am
Thanks for the changes – It’s so much easier to find the groups now. I’ve just done a ‘test’ search for my group (BQL British Quilt Group) using the words British Quilt – why on earth does a Canadian Freecycle group come up as the first hit and then a page of other small groups the last one on page one being: ‘The Zomi Welfare Organization’??? – nothing whatsoever to do with Britain or quilting! I see my group finally pitches up on page two, despite being far and away the biggest group with over a thousand members, the oldest at ten years and many posts each and every day. Shouldn’t we be the first for Best Match (the default)?
On a positive note – the ‘Photos’ changes are wonderful now, thanks.
ygroupmod said,
April 10, 2009 @ 5:24 am
Having same problem as Sue in NJ. The page numbers and “Next” boxes are not clickable in Firefox or Netscape. Running MAC OS 10.
Donald Hellen said,
April 10, 2009 @ 5:55 am
Melissa,
How often are the search terms updated? I have several groups. One of them deals with growing hops, another with homebrewing beer. The one about hops (Grow-Hops) is listed above the homebrewing group (Zymurgy) even though the description has the words homebrewer and homebrewing multiple times. Another one about brewing equipment (BrewingEquipment) also rates higher than our homebrewing group.
I made some changes to the group description in the homebrewing group and wondered if it wil lmake any difference in the search results.
Please understand that I am not entirely unhappy with the new search. Zymurgy still is on the first page of results at number seven. I just though it was strange that a group that is more generalized about the subject would show up lower than our other groups. All three are on the first page, though!
Also, I’ve tried doing various things last night and was getting this message that didn’t seem related to what I was doing:
“We’re Sorry…
We are unable to complete your request at this time. We are aware of this problem and are working on a resolution. (code -9997)
If you continue to receive this error for more than 48 hours, please contact our Customer Care team. We apologize for this inconvenience. ”
You have my permission to contact me by my Yahoo email if you wish. I probably won’t re-visit this post.
Donald
oth said,
April 10, 2009 @ 5:57 am
I happened to do a Group Search yesterday before seeing this blog entry – and I did not like “the new look”.
Why? – Because I now have to scroll forever to see results.
I did like the additional information that is now provided, but did not like the fact that I must go thru the Group Home page now to view messages (in public Groups).
I don’t know yet whether the results of my Search are better than before – so I am not addressing this issue yet. Just responding to the headline of this message.
And, yes it is nice to see a blog entry right around the time a new improvement is introduced at YG.
Mouse said,
April 10, 2009 @ 8:04 am
Great improvement.
I hope that you will — and I urge you to — add capability, as soon as feasible, for refining search findings by adding subsidiary search categories, as Google’s “advanced search” does. Not just for searching this new global Y!G page, but also for searching messages in a any given group’s archives.
I also urge you would to add capability for the person sending a comment via a web page to cc him or herself. I know this can be done, because some organizations/websites — albeit still a very small handful — do DO it., but most still do not.
Thanks for all the good things you do do.
TheTravelzine said,
April 10, 2009 @ 9:13 am
A search for Travel doesn’t find TheTravelzine (top level, 10 year old group,1600 members). Someone needs to look at the search results. There are countless groups that do not belong in that category. Some of the photos are oversized or mis-positioned. Many groups are Adult oriented.
John said,
April 10, 2009 @ 9:48 am
I have a group that is adult oriented (not pornographic, but talks about adult topics). Apparently adult oriented groups are still not found in the search engine. I could understand this back when Yahoo didn’t have any ability to screen for age, but that’s not the case anymore.
The current policy makes it necessary for other groups to spam each other since it’s the only way they have to let adults know their groups exist. Having a way to search for what you’re looking for in the adult topic arena would do a lot to improve that issue.
If a member is logged in with a profile that shows them to be over 18, how about giving them the option of searching adult oriented groups, too? Or maybe you could create a separate “Adult Group Search” that has to go through an age confirmation page to get to it.
Melissa Daniels said,
April 10, 2009 @ 11:04 am
@John,
We’re actually looking at addressing this issue in a future release as we know it’s an issue. I can’t give you a firm timeline but you should see a feature like this in the very near future.
-Melissa
Melissa Daniels said,
April 10, 2009 @ 11:09 am
Several of you have commented on the fact that your groups (though they’re high ranking, active, and established) are not showing up on the first page of search results. As mentioned in the post above, the new search does not use a new algorithm at this time, so the search results you are seeing are similar to, if not the same, as what you were seeing prior to the most recent search release. We plan on updating this algorithm in a future release, making it easier for you to find the groups that interest you most, and are the most relevant to you.
Additionally, at this time, search currently scours your group’s description for relevant, matching material. We are working to improve this feature, and the search functionality. Thanks for your patience– we know these are pressing issues, and we are working to rectify them.
-Melissa
peacelover said,
April 10, 2009 @ 11:43 am
We, too, at “FreecycleHB” have reported the “no messages after March 19″ to the link so many times and still no change. This really wastes much of our moderator time as we need to see these messages in order to do our moderating duties.
Jack said,
April 10, 2009 @ 2:39 pm
The new features are VERY good but when I do a search, after the first few pages, I get this error:
HTTP Status 400 –
type Status report
message
description The request sent by the client was syntactically incorrect ().
Jalene said,
April 10, 2009 @ 8:13 pm
I too am getting the message that Jack has posted about.
HTTP Status 400 –
type Status report
message
description The request sent by the client was syntactically incorrect ().
What does this mean and when is it going to be fixed?
I have trying to find a certain group for days now and can’t because of getting this message every time. It’s beginning to become very frustrating and I am Not liking the new search at all. I rarely had a problem finding any group doing it with the old search. But I do like the idea of getting rid of any inactive groups because it would be so nice to not have to scroll thorough tons of groups that no longer exist or have no releveance to the type of group I was looking for. I feel that a couple of attempts to contact the owners/mods of these groups should be enough to see if there is enough interest to keep a group going or not. No response=group terminated.
Joel said,
April 10, 2009 @ 9:10 pm
@Melissa
I’ve been a moderator of my Yahoo! Group for over three years, and I have never ever been able to find my group in the Search funtion. It pisses me off – how else are we going to attract members, when all they get is a bunch of spam / dead Groups.
My Group is an Adult group, and we have a very unique header IcyHotMen. I type that in, and I get absolutely nothing.
Ros Lamb said,
April 11, 2009 @ 6:47 am
The changes go some way to making searches more helpful but I’d like to see an option to search by how active a group is. I don’t want to be presented with groups that have huge numbers of members but hardly any messages are posted, for example, whereas others may want a quieter group.
I moderate one of the most active UK groups for pet rabbits UK Companion Rabbits. We send a lot of messages, but only have 393 members. There is another UK pet rabbit group that has far, far more members but posts are very sporadic. I’d like prospective new members to be able to find which group best fits their needs in terms of activity.
Shyanne said,
April 11, 2009 @ 7:31 am
It would be nice if you could also put the ‘number of posts’ in the groups details, there are thousands of groups out there with thousands of members in each of them but only a hand full of posts. Our group on the other hand has 2000 members, has been active since day 1 when it started back in 2001 and has over 67,000 posts none of which are spam. It would be nice to if folks could see the number of posts to tell if it is an active group or not. The number of members does not truly reflect this, I have seen groups with 10,000 members and only 1-2 posts a month.
Marlene said,
April 11, 2009 @ 12:02 pm
I have noticed since the changes are being made that when I look at an email or delete it that I am now taken back to the top of the page instead of back to where I was. It makes it very difficult to handle my groups. I also need to click twice on the screen to roll to the bottom.
MK said,
April 11, 2009 @ 10:01 pm
I tried it, and i like the advancement.
i wonder what you have planned next.
I still like searching for terms though, that is a good search as well, i hope it is not discontinued.
Vamp said,
April 13, 2009 @ 11:08 am
I have to say I totally agree with Steve Cooke. All owners at least every 6 months should have to verify they are still in charge of their group. For all Yahoo knows, pedophiles could have taken over some of these dead groups and Yahoo would never know. The smartest thing is for us to verify our groups and get rid of groups with no active mods and owners. Isn’t this a no brainer and why hasn’t this been done ?
Cystal said,
April 13, 2009 @ 4:40 pm
I suggest for anyone having trouble getting your group to come up in the search results to use “keywords” in your group’s description.
Also, I disagree with deleting old groups. I have one that I visit/use less than once a year (My friends and I use it for reunions and such,) but I was responsible with the settings and made sure it couldn’t be inundated with spam. I am frustrated with some of the groups that I belong to that have gone to the wayside. I think there should be an option where the owner is automatically contacted and they have three months to re-activate the group after a year or so of inactivity and if they don’t than the five most active members get a chance to become a moderator. Or perhaps they just become “archived”. …ANYTHING would be better than old groups getting deleted.
Cystal said,
April 13, 2009 @ 4:41 pm
Forgot to add that I’d like to be able to see more results per page.
Also I think it would be neat if “Most active” were a filter option.
Tari said,
April 13, 2009 @ 7:26 pm
I am one of three owners/moderator’s for an invitation only group, also a member of another invitation only group…neither are now showing. These are not searchable groups as they are by invite only. When I use the “Can’t See All My Groups” link…it says it can’t find any for me. FIX IT PLEASE!!!!! These are very important groups for me and the others on them.
Steve Cooke said,
April 13, 2009 @ 7:31 pm
In response to Cystal’s comments on my proposal for an automatic group deletion system, I don’t think that my suggestion would cause any issues for your situation.
I wasn’t proposing an instant cut-off with no right of appeal. I said that the group owner should be contacted periodically, perhaps once a year, and asked to confirm that they wish the group to remain in existence. If they don’t respond to that request within a reasonable time period, a reminder would be sent to them and, if there’s still no reply, a message sent to all group members advising them of the situation. Those group members whose email addresses are still active (and remember that in many cases the sort of dead groups we’re talking about actually have very few ‘live’ accounts, as nearly all the original subscribers are now ‘bouncing’ addresses) would then have the opportunity to contact the group owner themselves if Yahoo’s reminders were being ignored and, yes, perhaps they could then be offered the chance to volunteer to take over the reins. Choosing the most active members, as you suggest, might be difficult, however, because in some of these groups the most active members are simply spammers and it would be difficult to expect Yahoo to decide which subscribers are genuine. It would, after all, need to be an automated system to be practical.
Your suggestion of archiving the group rather than deleting altogether is a good one, at least in the first instance. Doing that for a limited period, say a year, would at least provide the opportunity for an absentee owner to return to active duty if he/she had been missing due to, say, illness or a long period without access to the internet.
The current situation is ridiculous, though. It’s damaging the credibility of Yahoo Groups as a whole and thereby undermining the chances of groups that are properly run. A while back I joined a group apparently dedicated to a specific model of electronic synthesizer. It presented itself as having 400 members and appeared to be very active. When I subscribed, however, I found that the original owner had long departed – even his email account was a bouncing one – and, while there were a few legitimate members struggling to have a constructive dialogue, 90% of the postings were being made by spammers. After numerous attempts to track down the original founder failed, I set up an alternative group that, through the migration of the genuine members of the other group, soon managed to attract over 100 subscribers who were then able to continue their discussions without the interruption of spammers harvesting their email addresses. The trouble, however, is that other group still exists and now has even more so-called ‘members’. Its original owner has since been in touch and said he has no idea how to close it down as he lost the passwords. Anyone searching Yahoo for a group on that topic will find that spam group first. After they’ve signed up and received several dozen invitations to meet Russian ladies, get rich quick, purchase ‘doctor-approved pills’, etc, they’ll leave the group. Hopefully, they’ll find our group but the majority will probably give up on Yahoo Groups altogether. That’s not good for any of us.
Melissa Daniels said,
April 15, 2009 @ 4:44 pm
@ygroupmod @Sue,
While the team works on pushing out a fix for your issues (not being able to see/click the “next” buttons on the search pages), I wanted to pass along a temporary work around:
To search today in Firefox you should be able to do your search, then add “&sg=10″ (no quotes) to the end of the URL of the search page to go to the second page. Then when you want to go to the third page, make it “&sg=20″, then “&sg=30″, etc.
So for example, if my main search was for “kitten” I would go to the search page, enter the search term and would see this URL: http://groups.yahoo.com/search?query=kitten
Then, to be taken to the next page, I would append the URL with &sg=10 so that it now reads: http://groups.yahoo.com/search?query=kitten&sg=10
This would take me to page 2.
Hope this helps!
-Melissa
Christine said,
April 16, 2009 @ 6:56 am
I did a search to see if my group shows up but it doesn’t. I used all the terms that would naturally come to mind, they are pretty unique (aspergers richmond VA) and there aren’t that many hits so it’s not like it got lost in the results. (and it matters whether or not you put an apostrophe in Asperger’s — you get one of the three local groups, but not all three and not mine at all) Any ideas?
Thanks!
Claudia said,
April 20, 2009 @ 4:20 pm
Can’t change the group picture. I keep getting an “unknown error” message from Yahoo.
Karen said,
April 26, 2009 @ 2:24 am
I created a group & it is not listed even though I have ticked the box. Any ideas?
allen lennier said,
April 26, 2009 @ 11:58 pm
urgent help needed, this search feature doesn’t work properly:
( i guess it’s the same issue what karen mentioned on 26.4. 2:24 am )
if i look for the group with name: tango-de with the search words tango-de i find it as the best match on place 8, how can that be?
and the group swing-de isn’t shown up anyway!
can anyone help?
or am i stupid and what do i have to learn?
thanks for your support and help,
regards allen
Crystal said,
April 29, 2009 @ 3:42 am
Christine, I looked at your homepage. You don’t have Asperger Syndrome anywhere in the description. You must make sure there are spaces. Even for Richmond. For the name of the group, put a space in between Richmond and Asperger. (The section that shows up next to the search bar.)
And to note, when I looked up “Asperger Richmond” your group was the first on the list.
Pekka Siiskonen said,
May 4, 2009 @ 9:52 pm
Isn’t the level of activity on a Yahoogroup a better indicatior about a group worth joining than than the number of zombie mebers?
Date of last post or number of posts in last 7 days would tell much more about the group than the number of members!
The same applies to view: http://groups.yahoo.com/mygroups
Should I really be more interested in knowing the e-mail account or method of delivery I’m using at each Yahoogroup rather than knowing if there has been _any_ activity in my Yahoogroups lately? [this was Off-Topic -- sorry]
serg998 said,
May 18, 2009 @ 10:07 pm
Hello!
Since May 17, 2009 I don’t view in “Search result” any group founded after May 12, 2009.
Cari said,
May 19, 2009 @ 6:50 pm
I created a group called Beachway, but when I searched for beachway, it did not come up. Only one other group, Beachway Park, came up. If I searched for the exact name of my group, it should be coming up, why isn’t it?
Alok said,
June 1, 2009 @ 12:21 pm
hey cumon yaar create a new group …………………
sachin singh said,
June 1, 2009 @ 2:15 pm
let’s check what;s new in google
moh'd mageed said,
June 2, 2009 @ 8:39 am
every time i got invetion to join agroup
some things happened and i can’t get throw
pls , can you help me with that .
regard
mohammed
Nubia said,
June 2, 2009 @ 4:17 pm
hi dear melissa
there is a kind of bug these days
whenever we accept a very big mail with a heavy attachement
for exemple an attachement power point size 8mb
even we only accept it ONLY one time
we receive it 2 or 3 times in our mail box
but on the message page of the group it is only 1 time
i hope you can solve this because it fill our mail box with heavy duplicates
best regards
Nubia from nubia_group
pong said,
June 6, 2009 @ 4:06 am
I can’t post anything. All I get is this error message:
We’re sorry, but we were unable to complete your request at this time.
If you continue to receive this error for more than 48 hours, please contact our Customer Care team. We apologize for this inconvenience.