| Using Yahoo Pipes Technology to Increase Search Results Relevancy June 19, 2007 I. Introduction. In early 2007, Yahoo published a website, http://pipes.yahoo.com/pipes/, that users could use, as quoted from the website, to “combine many feeds into one, then sort, filter and translate to create your ultimate custom feed”. One of the goals of my own website, http://www.informationforaccountants.com/, is to find and develop unique and innovative ideas on using the Internet to aid business decision-making. In May 2006, I published an article, http://www.informationforaccountants.com/article_RSS_Feeds_1.html, here on my website, on the use of RSS feeds by accountants and accounting departments. This article was based on my evolving understanding and conclusions that RSS feeds could be useful as a source of information for accountants and other decision makers. This RSS feed article that I wrote created an idea in me that RSS feeds, if they could be “filtered” for specified information (or data), would offer additional exciting and useful ways of presenting relevant information and data to accountants. I was thinking about the possible ability to filter, for example, feeds with information on equipment and also costs, such that specified equipment and their costs would be the RSS feed output. The originator of the RSS feed might be an auction site. Such information might be useful to accountants as a source of reliable fair market values for equipment. This was one idea that came to mind, but others also exist, and I sensed that if such “filtering”, and “searching”, of RSS feeds was possible, a great potential would exist for a really useful information tool for accountants, and businesses. Since writing that RSS feed article, I continued to be interested in RSS feeds, especially along the lines of “filtering”, or “searching” RSS feeds for specified information and data. Therefore, when I read about the creation by Yahoo, of their Pipes website, and Pipes technology, I went to the Pipes website and started to learn about Yahoo Pipes. Unfortunately, I do not have the understanding and knowledge of HTML search commands, etc., to understand all that can be done with the Yahoo pipes technology. This will be, I hope, an ongoing learning development for me as I continue to try to explore ways in which Pipes technology can lead to information and data output products useful to decision makers. However, I do have enough skills that I was able to develop, at this time, what I consider to be a useful Yahoo Pipes output product for accountants and businesses. This article describes this output product in the next section. II. An Output Product, Using Yahoo Pipes Technology. Each of the approximately 175 content pages that I am developing as part of my website development work now contain a Yahoo Pipes news feed and search engine output product. For example, at the content page (Internal Controls in Accounting and Business), http://www.informationforaccountants.com/Internal_Control.html, you should see the Yahoo Pipes output product, “Yahoo Pipes – Yahoo Search and News Feeds Output for Internal Controls”, at the bottom of the page. This output product is also provided here: This Yahoo Pipes output product shows some of the ways in which Pipes technology can be used for good results, such as: 1. Information outflow from both RSS feeds and current searching of a search engine, using keywords, can be combined together into one output product; 2. Outflows can be filtered by what appears in the outflow title, what appears in the descriptive narrative associated with the outflow, what appears in the URL associated with the outflow, and other attributes associated with the outflow; and 3. Duplicate outflows can be prevented from appearing in the output product. Because Yahoo Pipes technology allows you to set up the above (combination of RSS and search results, based on selected keywords; filtering; and duplicate elimination) and to transfer the output to one’s website, relatively easily, this technology, I believe, can efficiently and effectively (and uniquely) enhance one’s use of available information on the Internet (i.e., available in RSS feeds and in search engine indexes). I believe an examination of the Yahoo Pipes output product on any of the 175 content pages at my website shows this. Each of these output products deliver what seems to me to be very high relevancy for either a search of search engine indexes or for a filtering of RSS news feeds. For example, in the “Yahoo Pipes – Yahoo Search and News Feeds Output for Internal Controls” output product, given above, each of the 15 “hits” shown (the number of “hits” allowed in the output product was limited to 15) has, what I consider to be, reasonably good relevancy for the topic “accounting internal controls in business”. I believe you will not get such results doing a search of any of the search engines using, for example, terms such as “ internal control” and business. III. Conclusion. This article describes a use of Yahoo Pipes technology that, hopefully, enhances the information that is available on each of the 175 content pages of this website. The Yahoo Pipes output product adds additional valuable links to each page, in a unique and efficient and effective way, using the Pipes Technology to search and filter. The use of this Pipes technology in finding website links with useful information on a topic is much more efficient and effective, than manually searching (using search engines) for those links and manually adding the links to the page. Further, each time the page is opened the search engine’s index is searched, so that a dynamic “live” search is being accomplished. When search engine indexes are updated and improved, and when search algorithms, used by the search engines, are changed, the Yahoos Pipes output product will reflect these changes when a new page is opened. Hopefully, in the months ahead, more useful Yahoo Pipes output products can be developed, written about here, and added to this website. End Please click here to return to the Management Accounting Information Center homepage. 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