Yahoo announces search-driven news blog

Yahoo have today launched a news blog driven by search queries from across its sites.

The Upshot will feature the work of six reporters and two editors, directly using search data to drive content topics.

Announcing the launch today, the blog featured an introductory post by editor Andrew Golis, who said the blog aims to focus on the needs of the user.

“Our goal is to be blunt narrators of the day's news, to cut through the noise and misinformation and get to the heart of what's important and why,” he writes. “We'll be fast, getting information to you as a story breaks and then sticking with it until the end. In the best tradition of blogging, we'll often tell you about the great work done by our competitors and recommend you go read it with a link. But we'll also tell you when ― and why ― we think a report is off-base or the conventional wisdom is wrong.”

According to a report by SearchEngineWatch, the blog will give site visitors significant control over content.

“In other words, the news content will be created by a team of editors and writers from trending search topics," they reported. "This means that instead of a "broadcasting" approach, the news will be targeted for the sites' readers who will themselves, indirectly crowdsource the topics they will be reading about on UpShot."

Trending topics are advertised at the top of the blog, at the time of writing examples included Tiger Woods, World cup and Vienna Girardi.

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