Clearly Yahoo! is still “in the game” as an independent search engine. Despite the pending purchase by Bing, the folks over at Yahoo! are continuing to innovate in an attempt to attract a larger share of searches.
Late last month they unveiled their new “search experience” with the new Yahoo! Search – which looks a lot like Google. Part of this change included a new homepage, improvements to their core group of products – Yahoo! Mail, Yahoo! Messenger – and a handful of new handy dandy search features such as:
- Intelligent Search Results – Allows you to explore results from key sites and narrow results using different types structured data. Over the past few months, even more enhanced results for product, local, entertainment, reference, social, and tech sites have been displayed automatically. With the new search page design, Yahoo! made it easier to see these rich results from an increasing number of sites.
- Feature-Rich Experience – Provides quick access to search features that make people’s online lives safer and easier, including Search Scan/SafeSearch (which helps protect you from viruses, spyware, and spam while you search) and Search Pad (a tool that helps you track sites and information while researching).
- Search Assist Expansion – With the new design, the query assistance is still available directly below the search box, but Yahoo! also incorporated it into the left-hand column for quick access lower on the page, even when the Search Assist layer is hidden. You can use this column to easily explore and discover concepts related to your query.
Feedback from users seems mixed between people who completely love it, to those who think the interface is too cluttered and overwhelming. The biggest change noticeable to marketers and site owners is that the change resulted in significant fluctuations in ranking results – but over time this may stabilize. We’ll continue to monitor those fluctuations for our clients and let you all know what we learn.
What do you think about the update? Share in the comments.
