How the Yahoo! homepage predicts your clicks

In the summer of 2008, at an artificial intelligence confab deep in Silicon Valley, Yahoo! senior research scientist Deepak Agarwal revealed that the web giant was using automated algorithms to select news stories on its famous front page. These algorithms, he said, had boosted click-through-rates by 25 to 30 per cent, driving millions of additional dollars in ad revenue. When we approached Agarwal after his presentation to discuss the new technology and identified ourselves as The Register, he promptly buttoned his lip. We could only hope he would have done the same with The Wall Street Journal or The New York Times or Mom and Pop's Shoestring Guide to All Things Artificial Intelligence, and three years later, our hope is still alive. This week, Raghu Ramakrishnan – Yahoo!'s chief scientist for search and cloud platforms – sat down with The Register to explain the technology in detail, boasting that click-through rates have now risen more than 270 per cent on the "Today" news module at the heart of the Yahoo! home page. Known as CORE – short for Content Optimization and Relevance Engine – the system doesn't replace human editors.