Future of Yahoo

Yahoo's New Search
Yahoo has clearly been behind Google in terms of search, and has made significant moves to close the gap. After Terry Semel stepped down from his post, the company has returned back to basics - shifting focus away from new media to core services like search.

A new search
Yahoo has just launched several new features for its search engine, including a new "Search Assist" tool that automatically suggests search terms. The AJAX based tool, also allows guides you through refine your search. It's a great upgrade, and it's exciting to finally see some new innovations from Yahoo. For a glimpse into what's in store next for Yahoo Search, you can take a look at an alpha search site from Yahoo at: Search Alpha. It provides an integrated search engine that searches the web, flickr photos, yahoo answers, videos, news, and wikis for the information you are looking for.

Panama: Yahoo's answer to AdWords
Early this year Yahoo rolled out Project Panama, a major upgrade to US advertisers. With Panama, ads are better targetted and optimized based on their bid price, target geography, and click through rates. Advertisers get more effective ads with higher click through rates - while Yahoo and it's affilate network benefit from higher revenue. Of course, all of this is old news for advertisers who use AdWords - because these features have long been available on Google's network. But so far, the reports on Panama from advertisers has been positive, and it's better late than never.

What's next?
Rumor has it that the Yahoo executive team is having a meeting to talk about the strategy and the future of the company. Part of the plan: a major upgrade to Yahoo Publisher Network as a response to Google AdSense.

It's about time!