Two days ago Yahoo! unveiled its updated search options. Firstly, there is the new option bar on the left side of your search results page.  This left menu option offers you the possibility of looking for one specific source only.  The sites proposed by Yahoo will vary based upon the keyword you use.  For example when you are looking for a person, Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter will show up, but when you are looking for ‘how to’,  the sites  ehow, and YouTube  will show up.   It is a pretty good idea which facilitates searching.

Yahoo! New left Menu

The other innovation from the Yahoo! search team is the search history.  When you‘re looking for different keywords relevant to one topic Yahoo! can differentiate between two meanings for the same word.  For example, Yahoo! will understand that Jaguar is a car company and not an animal.

All these improvement are very good and quite user friendly, but I am not sure why they are doing all this work when we know that Bing is going to take over. Also, I cannot find any of these new options on Yahoo!. Maybe it is not online yet or I am not smart enough to find it.

Yesterday was a big day in the search engine world as Microsoft and Yahoo have signed a ten year partnership deal. To be brief about the, Bing is going to be the search engine for Yahoo! and Yahoo will focus on its portal.

Bing Yahoo! - Deal

What does this deal means for SEO?

Firstly, the Yahoo search engine will disappear pretty soon. So you will not have to worry anymore about the Yahoo ranking report. You should start checking where your ranking on Bing is and take it more seriously because with this deal we can expect a bigger market share for Bing search engine (probably 15 to 20% in Europe, 30% for the US). Good news for reports

If Bing is bigger that also means that our company or your SEO agency should update and create new Bing recommendations and not only focus on Google. Now you should understand Bing and how it is working.

After more than five years of SEO recommendations focused only on Google, the rules will be a little bit different now. SEO recommendations should now include Google and Bing best practices and try to see what Google and Bing have in common as well as their differences.

The good thing about it is that Bing and Google are probably very similar and your SEO strategy should not really change.

Bing has some new challenges, for example the pop-up that opens when you have your mouse on the result. This will need to be covered to make sure it is attractive to the user.

In a way, by having one less search engine more SEO work should be created, because we will no longer focusing on one search engine.

Three days ago Google had changed its result page for keywords relevant to places (e.g.: Paris, London, Yellowstone park…)
When you are looking for information about London, the Google results page will now include the map result and four pictures of the city.

Google new presentation

This new presentation looks a little bit better but it is not a major change. When you click on the picture on the left of the map you are automatically redirected to Google Maps with the location where the picture was taken.
Compared to Yahoo!, Google is (once again), a little bit late with this update. The Yahoo! results page has a different view and offers its own content relevant to the city and not a direct link to the map. You can, for example, find information about hotel, restaurant, flights and maps. Yahoo! also proposes some pictures of the city and the top rated things to do.

Yahoo! London Search Result Page

For this kind of search the Yahoo! result page is definitely the best functional solution and they also eliminate the competition (because all the content proposed is from Yahoo! or partners). This is probably why Google did not propose any hotel, restaurant on its own result page.
Once again they Google seem to have attempted to copy Yahoo!

Few months after Yahoo!, Google has set up a new copyright filter on its image search. This option allows the user to select a picture free of copyright.

The only way to have access to this option is via the advanced image search, which is not very user friendly.

Google Image Search

This function is obviously good and simple but this is clearly not an original idea, they seem to have copied the idea from Yahoo! They don’t even add anything to it.

 
Google has infuriated Microsoft this week with the Google O.S. and today, they have probably irritated Yahoo! by replicating their function.

 
Google are definitely trying to kill off the competition… and I am not sure that Yahoo! can take it. Between Bing and Google the chances of Yahoo’s continuing success are minimal.

Yahoo! launches the new online pad. The principle is simple; if you are doing some research on a specific topic on Yahoo! (for example: vacation in Hawaii, new mobile phone…) after a few searches on the same subject, Yahoo! will suggest that you open its pad.

The Yahoo pad is organised by websites visited and you can add comments about each of these websites, you can also make general comments not relevant to any of the websites.

It is a nice idea to take notes when you research online, but to be honest it is pretty useless. Primarily, to use it you need to have a Yahoo account and activate it. After few searches on Yahoo about mobile phones and Rio de Janeiro, Yahoo didn’t give me the option of opening the pad! .. Really annoying, you cannot open this pad whenever you want or need to…

Also this pad doesn’t offer a lot more than a simple Notepad (from Windows) just a better presentation. I do not see the big advantage or value of this tool.

Yahoo should focus more time on its search engine algorithm or useful functions than little gadgets that nobody is going to use.

Since the start of the Roland Garros Tennis tournament (French Open) you can follow the score very easily via Google or Yahoo!. Both search engines offer the possibility to see the scores on the search engine result page.

It is not the first time that Google and Yahoo have had their own shortcut on the results page; you can look, for example, at any conversion rate (money, distance…).

For the French Open, Google set up an RSS feed from the official website to its result page (for the keywords relevant to Roland Garros). This graphic version is pretty simple and the result links to the official website.

Google - Roland Garros

Yahoo! once again has worked a little bit harder with its own RSS feed. The result links to the Yahoo sport section. There are also some other links to some other pages of Yahoo! Sport (Scores, schedule, photos and video). The graphic view of the score is also a little clearer.

Yahoo - Roland Garros

It is a very good way for Yahoo! to promote is own content. Yahoo! also did a lot better job by proposing some other links relevant to Roland Garros. Google’s provides minimum services, but did it…

Following previous improvements made to Yahoo Image search in March, Yahoo decided to further improve it by adding a new function which allows searcher to select a picture free from copyright.

The principal is simple, when you are looking for a picture on Yahoo a filter bar shows up with different options. You can select a picture by size, colour, from Flickr or not, all of these option are very classic, however Yahoo! includes a re-use option. When you select this new option you have two more different choices; either select image free to reuse for commercial reasons or the one that can be modified.

Yahoo! Image Search - Reuse

The Yahoo! filter uses a Creative Commons license in order to select the copyright free images.

My question is what stops a user using a not copyright free image from a third party element and post the picture under a Creative Commons license…

Anyway, this new function of Yahoo! Search Image is pretty interesting and for once different from Google!