Yahoo! Highlights Search on Home Page

Yahoo! made its commitment to search more prominent this
week, re-designing the search interface on its highly-trafficked home page
to highlight images, yellow pages, and product search features.

The new, longer search box highlights functionality that Yahoo! added back
in April, giving the search features more prominence. Tabs for images,
yellow pages, and product search appear on the front page, in a manner
reminiscent of the user interface of rival Google.com. Previously, the
more-advanced Yahoo! features were only available through search.yahoo.com.

The company painted the move as a way to allow users to more easily and
quickly find what they seek. It may also allow Yahoo! to increase the volume
and targeting of searches on its network — searches it has committed to
monetize through the recent acquisition of Overture, and through the
services, like Product
Search it offers to small businesses.

Yahoo! is expected to launch additional
vertical search features in the near future. Jeff Weiner, whose title at
the company is search czar, said recently that Yahoo! would launch
topic-specific search for its vertical channels, such as Yahoo! Travel, Get
Local, Sports and Finance. Weiner also said the company was exploring
personalized search.

Yahoo! began as a directory-style search portal and has recently moved to
return to its roots with the purchases of Inktomi and Overture. Yahoo!
brought in $140 million in revenues from paid search in 2002, and executives
have committed themselves to making search a major focus this year and in
the future.