The 2010 SMX West conference kicks off this week in Santa Clara, Calif., and we’re excited to be there! Yahoos will be sitting on a handful of panels, so stop by and learn what we’re up to.

Tuesday, March 2, 2010

Time: 10:45 a.m. – 11:45 a.m.
Panel: Real Time Search & The Major Search Engines
Speaker: Ivan Davtchev, Senior Product Manager, Yahoo! Search

Wednesday, March 3, 2010

Time: 1:30 p.m. – 2:45 p.m.
Panel: Search Meets Display, Display Meets Search
Speaker: David Oliveira, Regional Vice President Sales, Yahoo!

Time: 4:45 p.m. – 6 p.m.
Panel: Ask The Paid Search Reps
Speaker: Tomaso Pozzi, Product Manager, Yahoo!

Thursday, March 4, 2010

Time: 9 a.m. – 9:45 a.m.
Panel: Keynote – The State Of The Search Union
Speaker: David Roth, Director of Search Engine Marketing, Yahoo! Inc.

Time: 10 a.m. – 11:15 a.m.
Panel: Bringing SEO In House: How To Be Successful!
Speaker: Laura Lippay, Director of Technical Marketing, Yahoo!

Time: 11:30 a.m. – 12:30 p.m.
Panel: Ask The Search Engines
Speaker: Arnab Bhattacharjee, Senior Director, Yahoo! Search Technology and Engineering, Yahoo!

We’re looking forward to seeing you there!

Yahoo! Search Team

The little bird is right. Yahoo! is partnering with Twitter, making it possible to integrate real-time content into social experiences on Yahoo! Starting today, you’ll be able to see more fascinating and news-worthy tweets when you search on Yahoo!

Last year we integrated Twitter results in the Yahoo! News Shortcut and for other buzzing topics. With today’s partnership, we have access to the full public feed of Twitter content. We’ve built a real-time index of this feed so you can see what people are tweeting about the topics you’re looking for.

Go on, give it a test flight: Go to Yahoo! and search for “Obama Twitter” or “iPad” to check out how we’re working to help you stay in touch with the people and things you care about most – across the entire Web.

If you are as big a fan of curling as we are, here is an example of what you could see on Yahoo! Search:

Real-time search involves striking a balance between showing the very latest content and showing slightly older content that may be more interesting or authoritative. In the coming weeks, we will be experimenting along these lines and upgrading tons of stuff to provide better, quicker, and more relevant Twitter results on Yahoo! Search result pages.

You can learn more about this partnership in today’s Yodel Anecdotal post by Bryan Lamkin, Yahoo! SVP of Consumer Products Group, to get his take on how Yahoo! and Twitter have just made your Web world smaller, yet larger at the same time.

We want to know what you think! Drop us a tweet with your comments at @yahoosearch.

Ivan Davtchev, Shiv Ramamurthi, Saurabh Pathak

Yahoo! Search

What can search data tell you about people? How can you use search data to project the commercial success of movies, video games, and other products? These are just a few of the challenges from the microeconomics and social systems area of the 2010 Key Scientific Challenges Program that we announced on Jan. 27 this year.

The Key Scientific Challenges program is a competition that encourages top graduate students globally to collaborate with Yahoo! and help invent the future of the Internet. The competition focuses on a variety of scientific issues, from developing algorithms that turn raw information into personally relevant experiences, to discovering insights about online advertising and experimenting with new sociological models for how people engage with the Web.

Go to Yodel Anectotal to read a post by Sharad Goel from Yahoo! Labs, where he shares some thoughts on how Yahoo! is tackling the new opportunities for research into the social sciences that the Web is making possible.

Yahoo! Search

Today we issued a press release announcing that we’ve received clearance from both the U.S. Department of Justice and the European Commission for our search agreement with Microsoft. Now that we’re full steam ahead, I’d like to share what we at Yahoo! see as an exciting opportunity to focus on creating new ways for people to search online.

Today’s Yahoo! Search:

First, let’s take a step back and explain what this alliance means for people who search with Yahoo! Most of the things you see on the typical Yahoo! Search results page below will not immediately change as a result of this alliance. What will change is that the basic search listings and ads will be provided by Microsoft instead of our own back-end platform – those are the text and links that you see in the left-hand image.

However, as you can see highlighted in the right-hand image, Yahoo! will continue to enhance the search result listings as we do for people today. A few examples of this are:

1) Providing you with rich results that display the most relevant information from Yahoo!’s rich content properties, as well as other great product, local, entertainment, reference, social and tech sites.

2) Showing specific results from vertical search products, like Yahoo! News.

3) Providing handy tools on the left-side of the page, such as our Search Pad and Search Scan apps, site filters that help you refine and explore the search results more easily, and related search term suggestions to help you refine your search further if the results aren’t quite what you were looking for.

Tomorrow’s Yahoo! Search:

And what you’re seeing today is just the tip of the iceberg. With Microsoft providing us the underlying list of search results, our Yahoo! team can now focus on making the overall experience of finding stuff online and getting things done easier for you – whether you’re searching at yahoo.com or just looking for specific information in the moment while using our many great products and properties on any device. We have lots of ideas for things we can do to help you with three main aspects of searching:

• Ways to find things faster when you’re just starting your search – by continuing to enhance our great Search Assist technology and also weaving search more deeply and conveniently into other Yahoo! products.

• New ways to help you explore the things that matter most – whether that’s with more rich results and options for organizing the search results page, or by showing you interesting Search topics that you might want to browse through in other relevant places that you spend your time on Yahoo!

• More apps and other tools to help you get things done as quickly as possible. We know that people don’t want to search per se – you want to complete tasks in your day, and we’ll be inventing new ways to help you do that.

I’m very excited about the opportunities ahead and hope all of you will come along with us for the ride. Go to Yahoo! Search today, try out a few searches, and give us feedback. If you have questions about the alliance, we’ve posted more information at the official search alliance Website, on our Yahoo! Search Marketing blog, and on the Yahoo! Developer’s Network blog.

Shashi Seth
Senior Vice President, Yahoo! Search Products

By now you’ve seen our global ad campaign that shows how Yahoo! is focused on YOU like never before. And at Yahoo! Search, we continue to deliver what you need in just one search. We’ve launched a new national ad campaign covering radio and the Web. Our new campaign looks directly at the Yahoo! Search experience, where we continue to bring you all the information you need in one place.

If you haven’t heard our ads on your favorite radio station, you can listen to them here:

Our radio spot, “Forever Lovers”:

Our radio spot, “Sushi Kaiju”:

Whether you’re looking for local information, your favorite sports team, or the latest on entertainment, music, or movies, Yahoo! Search brings you the information you need at your fingertips. So if you haven’t visited us lately, visit Yahoo! Search and give us a try. And let us know what you think about our new ad campaign in the comments section below.

Colleen Jansen
VP, Global Consumer Marketing

As aid workers in Haiti settle into the anything-but-routine work of helping care for a devastated country, people continue to come to Yahoo! Search to find out how to help victims of the earthquake. Just this week, Haiti-related search spikes turned to “tents for Haiti,” which had 1,000 percent more searches than the previous week. The plight of Haiti’s orphans also continues to be on people’s minds as they search for “Haiti orphan rescue,” which buzzed to over 9,000 percent this week as Haitian orphans were taken in by the U.S. and as a scandal erupted over possible removal of children from Haiti.

Yahoo! Search data also paints an intriguing timeline of the 7.0 earthquake that shook the country on Jan. 12. As news of the quake spread, concerned citizens took to the Yahoo! Search to learn the details and to research how to help.

Right after the news of the quake, people turned to their mobile devices for immediate information. In the first two days after the quake, Yahoo! Mobile searches on “Haiti Earthquake” increased 3,300 percent. Popular search themes centered on photos, relief efforts, Wyclef Jean, and current news almost immediately. Several of the top earthquake queries were in Spanish.  As the week went on, people started looking for more contextual information, wanting Haiti maps, asking “where is Haiti”, and looking for information on Haitian poverty and whether the country is cursed.

In Yahoo! Web search, searches focused more clearly on volunteering and donating aid and time. Users were deeply concerned about the plight of Haitian orphans, offered prayers for Haiti, and researched church-based relief organizations. People were also eager to donate their help via text messaging as we saw searches for “texting to help Haiti,” “text Haiti 90999,” and “text Yele.”

Many searches focused on the names mentioned in news reports about Haiti’s earthquake. Searchers looked for former president François “Papa Doc” Duvalier, Port-au-Prince archbishop Joseph Serge Miot, and the head of the U.N. mission in Haiti, Hedi Annabi. Haitian president René Préval also spiked as he appealed for aid.

As the immediate shock subsided, Web searchers expanded their interest, looking for information on the Dominican Republic, Haiti’s neighboring country that that offered a lot of aid to migrating survivors. People also want to know more about other large earthquakes, notably the 1906 and 1989 earthquakes in California’s San Francisco Bay Area. They also looked up details about fault lines, causes of earthquakes and tsunamis, and the Richter scale for measuring the size of tremblers.

After learning of the quake, teams across Yahoo! stepped up to help with the relief efforts in a wide variety of ways. Yahoo! employees in the U.S. have donated more than $145,000 to the cause, including corporate matches for those donations. Yahoo! users have donated more than $1.5 million to support Haiti relief and rebuilding efforts globally. You can see more of our efforts on behalf of earthquake victims at Yodel Anecdotal. For up-to-date news about the Jan. 12 Haiti Earthquake, please visit http://news.yahoo.com/topics/haiti.

Jessica Hilberman

Yahoo! Search

You use Yahoo! Search to look for information on the Web, Yahoo! mail to keep up with friends, and Flickr to show off your pics. Show your love for your favorite tools by casting your vote for the Yahoo! products nominated for this year’s About.com Reader’s Choice Awards.

Yahoo! has been received 15 nominations in 13 different categories, including Yahoo! homepage, mail, Flickr, and of course, Yahoo! Search in the Best Search Engine category.

Voting closes on Feb. 24 and the winners will be announced on March 1. To vote for us, go to About.com’s Reader’s Choice Awards page to see the categories we’ve been nominated for and click the link for the Yahoo! product nominated for the subcategory to cast your vote.

Good luck to all the nominees!

Category: Desktop Publishing

• Best Source of Free Images – Flickr
• Best Source of Stock, Royalty-Free, or Rights-Controlled Images – Flickr

Category: Email

• Best Free Email Service – Yahoo! Mail
• Best Mobile Email Experience – Yahoo! Mail
• Best Email Innovation 2009 – Apps in Yahoo! Mail

Category: IM

• Best Mac IM – Messenger
• Best IM Feature – Messenger Video Calls
• Best Chat Rooms (on IM) – Yahoo! Messenger

Category: Smartphones

• Best Free iPhone App – Messenger, Flickr

Category: Web Design / HTML

• Best Information or Content Page Design – Yahoo! homepage
• Best Use of Images in Web Design – Yahoo! homepage, Flickr
• Best Overall Web Design – Yahoo! homepage, Flickr

Category: Web Search

• Best Search Engine – Yahoo! Search

Yahoo! Search is now live on Maktoob, the leading online Arabic-language community. This first launch from the Yahoo!-Maktoob partnership combines Yahoo!’s popular product and services with Maktoob’s compelling local content, bringing users the best of both sites.

We announced the acquisition of Maktoob in August, 2009, with plans to launch Arabic versions of Yahoo! Mail, Messenger, Search, and our homepage. We encourage Arabic-speaking Internet users to try out Yahoo! Search at Maktoob. Of course, you can also go to the Maktoob home page and enter any Arabic query to search the Web.

This is just the beginning of our long-term commitment to deliver relevant Arabic-language content and services to the region. Stay tuned for more news about our efforts in these emerging markets.

Kaushal Kurapati
Director of Product Management
Emerging Markets, Yahoo! Search

It’s the time of the year to look back on the past 12  months and reflect on events of the year. Here at Yahoo!, we’ve been analyzing billions of queries to find ways to look at the events of this year through the lens of search.

Today, the Yahoo! Year in Review returns with a brand new look at what’s happened this year.

We’ve expanded the list to take a look at important moments in 2009. Some somber moments this year are captured with our analysis of “Financial Hangovers” and “Market Darlings,” reminders of the tough economic times we are facing. We walked through the historic moments of President Barack Obama’s journey to the White House in a section we call “Obama in the House.”

It has also been a year full of the unexpected.  Remember the amazing transformation of Susan Boyle? Or the media circus around Falcon Heene, otherwise known as “Balloon Boy”? We’ve included them and other surprising celebrities in “Sudden Fame.”

You can read more about how we created the Yahoo! Year in Review at the Yodel Anecdotal blog. If you’ve got your own key moments of 2009 to contribute, you can tweet them here at http://yearinreview.yahoo.com/2009/moments.

Search Marketing Expo East kicks off in New York City on Monday, with many Yahoos on various panels to talk about important issues in the SEO and SEM community. We hope you’ll stop by SMX East and check out what we’re up to!

Monday, October 5, 2009

Time: 10:45 a.m. -12 p.m.
Panel: Duplicate Content Issues: The Search Engine Edition
Speaker: Cris Pierry, Senior Director, Search, Yahoo! Search

Time: 3:45 p.m. – 5 p.m.
Panel: Maps, Maps, Maps!
Speaker: Atif Rafiq, Director, Product Marketing, Yahoo! Local, Yahoo!

Time: 3:45 p.m. – 5 p.m.
Panel: Trademarks & Paid Search: How Have Things Changed
Speaker: Laura Covington, Associate General Counsel, Global Brand and Trademarks, Yahoo!

Tuesday, October 6, 2009

Time: 12 p.m. -1:30 p.m.
Panel: Ask The Search Engines: Best Practices Edition
Speaker: Cris Pierry, Senior Director, Search, Yahoo

Time: 4:45 p.m. – 6 p.m.
Panel: Universal & Blended Search Opportunities
Speaker: Larry Cornett, Vice President of Consumer Products, Yahoo! Search

Wednesday, October 7, 2009

Time: 9 a.m. -10:15 a.m.
Panel: Search Meet Display; Display Meet Search
Speaker: Antony Taylor, VP, Display Platforms, Yahoo!

Time: 11:45 a.m. -12:45 p.m.
Panel: Managing Search Across Business Units
Speaker: David Roth, Director of Search Marketing, Yahoo!

Time: 2 p.m. – 3 p.m.
Panel: Ask The Paid Search Reps
Speaker: David Miller, Director, Sponsored Search Product Management, Yahoo! Inc.

See the complete list of panelists and location.