More Search-Powered Features on Yahoo!

Search is evolving to mean more than entering keywords in a text box – at Yahoo! we believe it’s also about finding the right information at the right time. To help people discover information they want online, we’re enhancing and rolling out new search-powered features across the Yahoo! network.  One of these search-powered features is a new module for Yahoo! News, which we are giving you a preview today.

With this module, we’ve begun adding related search content below news stories – we call these modules “Infinite Browse” internally.  We are currently only testing this module with a fraction of visitors, so if you can’t find it on Yahoo! News yet, stay tuned.

This screenshot shows you an example of what we are testing initially – boxes like this appear below articles on Yahoo! News to give you more information on the topic you’re reading about.  With this feature, we’re leveraging our search technology to help people browse and explore things they’re interested in, such as images, videos, news articles, slideshows, and search suggestions – without having to go to a separate web page, type in a query and hit that “search” button.

These modules might look simple, but they harness an array of Yahoo! technologies and search sciences to complement the work of editors at Yahoo! News. In its first week, our internal data indicates that user engagement with this related search information in Yahoo! News is nearly twice the amount we see with similar features. We will be rolling this out to all users as soon as it is ready.

Another Search-powered feature people love is our “Trending Now” lists, which bring trending topics to your attention as you browse across Yahoo!

You can find the Trending Now list on the Yahoo.com homepage, Yahoo! Mail, Yahoo! Sports, Yahoo! News, Yahoo! Finance, omg!, and more. When you click on any of the terms on the Trending Now list, you will find the latest information about a hot topic and discover related content from Yahoo! Search.  For example, if you click on Lily Allen, one of the trending terms today, you’ll see helpful search results along with a list of other trending topics on the left side of the search results page that you can browse.

Lately, we’ve been working to make these lists even more useful by featuring newsworthy topics relevant to the page you’re on (like trending finance topics on Yahoo! Finance), and including the terms we think are most interesting and relevant to you personally.  Click-through rates have more than doubled since we’ve improved and optimized our Trending Now lists using the content optimization technology that powers the “Today Module” of the Yahoo! Homepage.

Keep an eye out for what’s Trending across Yahoo!, and let us know what you think!

Caroline Tsay, Director of Product Management, Yahoo! Search
Marc Davis, Product Manager, Yahoo! Search