Something I hadn’t ever noticed before is that Yahoo! offers very comprehensive “people search.” I say that in loosely and in the context of helping a visitor that is searching, find exactly what they are looking for.
Here are a couple sample queries. First, my name, “jonathan dingman“
So this search displays other results above the LinkedIn result, but none the less, it’s still clearly displayed with the correct data. How often this data is updated, that I have no idea.
Let’s try another query though. How about my close friend “brett petersel“
So this time, Brett’s LinkedIn profile shows up as the first hit.
Of course actual linking plays a role in where it is displayed in the search results, as you can clearly see in the first screen shot and the second screen shot.
But what I find extremely useful is the bottom line fact that Yahoo! even uses public LinkedIn information as part of their search results.
This is an area where I can see Google has plenty of room for growth, “people searching” as I want to call it.
