Search Editor dot Net

I found this job ad, search editor, from Yahoo! US.

Multiple levels, types available. May require Bachelor’s or Master’s in Journalism, Communications or related field. May require 0-5 years of experience.Represent the interests of search editors and content producers from global markets. Work closely with U.S. Search Editorial, product team, and engineering, while serving as the point person for international property editors and content producers in US and overseas. Provide easily understandable language of technical information to non-technical international contacts. Create and/or maintain documentation and reports for assigned properties/projects. Provide and coordinate trainings for International Search Editorial teams and coordinate all aspects of Search Editorial involvement in rollout and maintenance of Search products and their enhancements internationally. Must be available to work on projects at various, unanticipated sites throughout the United States.

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I walked down the steps of my front porch to my car parked on the street below. It was a sunny Tuesday afternoon and I was excited to be on my way to one of the world’s greatest information companies. As I lowered the convertible top of my car I thumbed through my iPod, selecting Cannibal Ox for the drive. The dirty sirens and pulsing beats of the music soon filled the moving air I sped north on the 280. I drove with my thoughts on why I was visiting the Yahoo Sunnyvale campus and what I expected to learn form this experience.

As a resident of the Silicon Valley it seemed obvious that I should visit a web-based company for this assignment. My growing interest in Web 2.0 applications directed me to contact a friend I had at Yahoo. It seems clear to me that professionals working within the field of records and information management are now working directly with web-based applications and I wanted to be sure to interview someone with this web-relevant experience. I was also interested to find out how my library science education relates to a real-world job with an online giant like Yahoo. Specifically, I was curious to know how the general information management stages I had been learning about fit into the picture.

Upon signing in and receiving my visitor nametag, I sat down in the Yahoo lobby and prepared for the interview. I reviewed the questions I had prepared:

1. Describe the corporate culture of Yahoo! What is the vision of the Mothership?

2. What is the function of your department within the greater company?

3. What is your job? Explain how you identify, store, distribute, and disposition information?

4. How is the information you work with indexed and accessed?

5. What software and technology do you use?

6. What preparations have you taken for your position?

7. Are you hiring?

After reading my outline, my thoughts turned to the woman I would soon be speaking with. Anneliese had graduated from the SLIS program in 2006 and it had been almost a year since I had last seen her. I remembered her as one of the few people I had met in the MLIS program that I actually enjoyed hanging-out with. I thought of the experiences we had shared. I knew it was going to be good to reconnect with Anneliese, even over a school assignment.

The hour-long interview passed by quickly and it was really great to see Anneliese again. We first discussed the Yahoo vision. We talked while sipping free coffee drinks and sitting at a comfortable booth in the Yahoo cafeteria. I explained that I was curious to know the directional statement of this large company. As it turns out, the corporate vision-statement is printed on the back of every employee’s key card. It reads, “To connect people to their passions, their communities and the world’s knowledge.” I then asked my friend to describe how her department relates to the delivery of this corporate vision.

I learned that Yahoo is divided into three primary groups: Technical, Advertising, and Audience. Anneliese is a Search Editor in the Search Editorial department and this department is in the Audience group. The Audience group is responsible for providing the content on all the Yahoo sites. The Search Editorial Department is responsible for the content on the Yahoo Directory (http://dir.yahoo.com). Each Search Editor at Yahoo becomes is a subject specialist directly responsible for maintaining the categories on Yahoo’s Directory. Anneliese is the television subject specialist working under the entertainment section of the Yahoo directory (http://dir.yahoo.com/Entertainment/Television_Shows/).

Anneliese informed me that the Search Editorial department actually has its own mission statement. She recited her department mission saying that they, “Use web expertise and knowledge of user search behavior to help users find what they are seeking and explore the web.” I was impressed that she could recite her department mission and that this vision was tied directly to the access and retrieval of information. I was curious to know how the Search Editorial department accomplishes this mission. I asked how her job responsibilities relate to the stages of identifying, storing, circulating and dispositioning information.

She explained that the information she deals with is related to websites. She must first identify websites that are relevant to her need and record the URL and create a text description for each website. To store this website information she must input the metadata into Yahoo’s database under the proper fields. Once uploaded to the database, the new website information will be linked to the Yahoo online directory and will be seen by the public within 48 hours of posting. Once the information is live on the directory it’s available for circulation.

The directory’s information is routinely tested for relevance by the Search Editors. The Search Editors must analyze query logs and forecasting calendars on a daily basis. This maintenance of the directory is performed to ensure the quality of Yahoo’s information. Websites that lose relevance are manually removed from the database. The Search Editors are also assisted in this disposition process by a program that crawls through the directory identifying 404 listings, which are promptly removed through what she calls, “automagic”.

The position of Search Editor deals with each of the four primary stages of information management. Clearly, the Search Editor must balance between identifying new information and assessing the relevance of older information. Anneliese feels that keeping up on the new content within her subject area is her job’s greatest challenge. She must regularly add new categories for new television shows and improve the assisted search features that interlink her related sites and subjects.

Managing Yahoo’s directory of web resources is certainly a considerable undertaking that requires teamwork and organization. The tasks and projects of the Search Editorial Department are organized with open-source project management software by twiki (http://twiki.org). This program is accessed online, which allows employees the luxury of working from home on a regular basis. This freedom from having to physically go to work is truly a valuable benefit. I was very impressed to hear that someone with a library science degree could be paid for surfing the Internet from home. Curious to know more, I asked how the courses she had taken in school had prepared her for this position.

I listened as Anneliese explained how her background in library science related to her present job. First, she made it clear that everyone in her department is smart (apparently a librarian attribute!) and of these forty smart people there are eight individuals with MLIS degrees. This background, she explained, is not specifically required for this work, but it is very helpful. Library science is the study of information organization and providing service to people with information needs. This field of study directly parallels the vision of Yahoo and Search Editorial Department. Probing deeper into this topic, I inquired as to the specific classes she felt were related to her daily tasks.

There were three classes that she recalls as being particularly important. First, Information Retrieval (LIBR 202) covered information seeking behaviors and data base building. These concepts are directly related to her daily work at Yahoo. Also, Information Technology Tools and Applications (LIBR 240) was a valuable experience in developing an understanding of how websites are built and how they interact with databases. Lastly, Cataloging and Classification ( LIBR 248) provided a great introduction to understanding the ontology and taxonomy of information, which is valuable when building a directory. Having completed these three courses myself, I was excited to see that these subjects had value and practical application in the real-world.

Anneliese and I finished our coffee drinks and talked briefly about life and our plans and goals. She told me that Yahoo was hiring and gave me some information about her department’s internship program. She told me that she would be happy to give my resume to her boss. I was grateful for such an offer and gladly took the information. I thanked her for taking the time to meet with me and told her I would be in touch.

As I pulled away form the Yahoo campus I merged into the heavy traffic heading south on the 101. The afternoon heat reminded me of summer and I peacefully reflected on information management and library science. My site visit had allowed me a better understanding of the basic stages of identifying, storing, distributing, and dispositioning information. I see how these functions are really the heart of library science. Every job related to library science deals with at least one or more of these primary stages. Of course, each organization dealing with information organization and service will have a different vision, but their system will include processes to identify, store, distribute and dispose of information.

Today’s library science professionals are working with information in a variety of formats and mediums. Regardless of the format, it seems extremely valuable for library science professionals to understand how new technology and web-applications relate to the stages that information will encounter in its lifecycle. Knowledge of such relationships allows SLIS graduates to develop and improve the efficiency of information processing. I am very pleased to have experienced a site visit of a web-based business that incorporates online applications of the information management practices taught at SLIS.

_Bjorn Jones

The search engine news blog, Pandia, which documents the Swedish paper’s enquiry to Ms. Spackman, asks “Will the term ‘Search Editor’ replace ‘Web Editor’ in future job ads?” Although an interesting question, it is the wrong question.

The real question is how long it will take newsrooms around the world to teach their editors and journalists how to write for the web, automatically implying an element of SEO. Neither the “Search Editor” nor the “Web Editor” will necessarily exist as a newsroom job in the near future. All newsroom staff will understand the intricacies of Web journalism.

The days when the copy editor would receive a rapidly written piece, touch it up with elegant prose and top it off with a catchy headline that would sell newspapers have changed. Now, that headline, written for the Web, might not be so catchy. The text, especially the first paragraph, might not be of Shakesperian quality. In fact, they both might be extremely boring to the erudite newspaper reader. But they will have the correct combination of keywords that will attract search engine spiders and thus drive readers to the page.

Who knows? Someday this may change. Someday someone could create a search engine with an algorithm that recognizes not just keywords, trackbacks and page views, but well-crafted writing and the integrity, investigation and transparency that a newspaper article should provide. But until that day, all newsrooms should train their staffs in SEO.

Source: Pandia

By John Burke

The Times has hired a Search Editor to work on searchability and search engine optimization.

The Swedish journalist Martin Jönsson of Svenska Dagbladet is arguing for the new term “Search Editor” or “Editor of Search”.

The Times

Martin tells the story about him meeting the Editor of Chief of the British Times, Anne Spackman, who told him that they have hired a so-called Search Editor.

The Times’ Search Editor is to explain to the editorial staff how the search structure of the Web functions, work on indexed pages and improve the rankings of their newspaper articles in Google, Yahoo! and other search engines.

This is an interesting development. Will the term “Search Editor” replace “Web Editor” in future job ads?

The ideal Search Editor

The ultimate solution would be an editor with knowledge of the following three topics:

1. Searchability through Web search engines, i.e. the external searchability
2. Information access on the site itself, i.e. internal searchability
3. Competences in copy-writing that combine the needs of human readers as well as search engines

Points 1 and 2 also include knowledge on how people search in general, on the Web and when doing on-site search.

If you do not have a person with all these competences, you will need a Web Editor/Web Journalist, an Information Arcitect/Usability Expert and a Search Engine Optimization Expert — and they must all be able to communicate with each other.

Because of this the optimal solution could be to have one expert combining all three areas. It will be hard to find persons with such a wide knowledge base, however.

Maybe the newspapers can look for technically oriented librarians with good insight into searching and Web search, and a background from journalism or usability studies? I believe this could be a possible market for librarians that face unemployment today.

If these experts known more than one language, that will be an advantage, as online newspapers and news sites often produce pages in several languages (especially in countries that do not have English as one of the main national languages).

Today we find colleges and universities offering studies in information architecture. In a few years we could see courses for Search Editors as well.

By Pandia Guest Writer Lars Iselid, Internetbrus

This article was originally published in Internetbrus, a Swedish blog on search engines and Internet searching that has been online since early 2001. It is written for both searchers and educators.

Internetbrus is owned and edited by Lars Våge and Lars Iselid. Lars Våge works as a librarian at Mitthögskolan and a programmer for JL Informationsteknik. Lars Iselid is a librarian at the Umeå University Library, freelance journalist for the computer magazine Datormagazin. He can be found blogging under the pseudonym Cyrille at Iaslash.org.

Lars and Lars are co-authors of a book on Internet research: Informationssökning på Internet.

Search Editor is a very new job. You will find some useful information about it here. At the moment, I collect jobs ads around the world for this position, search editor so that you can see its descriptions and requirements.

Enjoy your stay.

Danny N.