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

This week we showed you some of our hard work from the past six months. On Wednesday, we held “Yahoo! SearchSpeak,” an event for media at our headquarters in Sunnyvale, Calif., to share Yahoo!’s focus on and commitment to creating an amazing search experience.

Our new Senior Vice President of Search Products, Shashi Seth, joined Prabhakar Raghavan, Senior Vice President of Yahoo! Labs and Yahoo!’s Search Strategy, Larry Cornett, Vice President of Search Consumer Products, and David Pann, Vice President of Search Advertising, to share what we’ve been up to and preview some cool things we’re working on for the future. Here’s a video with some highlights from the event:

Some of the innovations in our demo included our Winter Olympics shortcut (which is live today), updates to Search Assist, Twitter integration, and a new idea we’re working on in our labs that will let you circle an area on a map on your iPhone and find restaurants within that area.

“Yahoo! has been in search, is in search, and will continue to be in search in the future,” Shashi said at SearchSpeak. “That is the stake we have put in the ground and we will continue to drive great features.”

We also talked about the great opportunity to make search results more useful for people by presenting them with actual things, rather than just basic links to Web pages – we see it as moving from a “Web of pages” to a “Web of things.” As we continue in this effort, our rich search results will help you discover and explore information that matters most to you.

You can check out the full footage from the event (except for the part during our unfortunate power outage!) and learn more about Yahoo! Search from Shashi and our execs.

Yahoo! Search Team

This year has been a lot of fun for a new sports fan like me. I endured many sleepless nights watching the Australian Open and loved every minute of the Super Bowl. I’ve mentioned before that I’m a huge fan of the Boston Celtics, and I can’t tell you how many hours I’ll probably spend in front of the TV this winter hoping they will make it to the playoffs.

But the biggest sports event this winter, The Winter Olympics, opens this Friday in Vancouver and promises to be spectacular. To help you follow the coverage of the 2010 Winter Olympics, Yahoo! Search, Yahoo! Video Search, and Yahoo! Mobile are introducing a set of features in the coming days to make your experience more fun and convenient.

Whether you follow familiar favorites like figure skating and ice hockey, or unusual sports like curling and the biathlon, you can type the sport’s name and see events and schedule on the search results page.

For example, type ‘ figure skating’ or ‘men’s ice hockey schedule’ to see event, time, and date information:

To follow your favorite athletes, simply type his or her name in the search box to get their profile, upcoming schedule, and recent results right on the top of the search results page.

Wonder which country is leading in medal count? Simply type ‘medal count’ and you’ll get the top five countries, or type ‘medal count Germany’ to get that country’s stats. Here’s a mock-up of what you might see on the search results page once the medal count rolls in.

You can also play the newscast or interview videos from Yahoo! Sports without leaving the search results page when you search for topics related to the 2010 Winter Olympics. And if you want to find out more information on a given topic, we will include links to the relevant content on Yahoo! Sports as part of the shortcut. Try it with ‘Olympics‘ and click on the “Play News Cast” play button.

You can see more videos about the 2010 Winter Olympics by searching for them on Yahoo! Video Search. Just enter “Winter Olympics” and refine by sport (“alpine skiing” or “curling”) or enter any athlete’s name to see relevant videos. We will keep these video refiners on Yahoo! Video Search for other events this year, so you can use this feature when you track other events of interest.

And of course, when you’re on the go, you can also follow the winter games on your mobile devices – we’ll be launching a set of features on Yahoo! Mobile so you can see information about your favorite sports or athletes wherever you are. For example, you can explore medal count, schedule, and athletes when you search for “alpine skiing” on your mobile phone.

To get started, go to m.yahoo.com from your mobile device.

I hope these features will make it easier for you to follow and explore the coverage of the Winter Olympic Games. Please note that many of these shortcuts won’t begin working until the games kick off, but be sure to try them out on Yahoo! Search once the games begin and let us know what you think.

Yuko Kamae
Yahoo! Search

The last six months have gone by in the blink of an eye for the Yahoo! Search team. Since the summer of 2009, we’ve launched an amazing amount of new improvements in Yahoo! Search to deliver a more personally relevant search experience. Now it’s even easier to find and explore what matters most to you. We made a short video to showcase what we’ve done in the last six months. Here are some of the highlights:

All-new Yahoo! Search

On Sep 22, 2009, we launched a completely redesigned Yahoo! Search in multiple markets around the world. The new page design aligns the experience across our new Homepage, Mail, and the search results page. This dynamic and integrated experience better understands what you are looking for so you can get things done quickly on the Web.

By rebuilding much of the foundational code for the SRP design and core functionality completely from scratch, we deliver a faster Search page with many exciting new features:

• SearchMonkey structured data: You can explore results from key sites and narrow results using different types of SearchMonkey structured data, making it easier to see richer results from an increasing number of sites.
• Search Scan, Safe Search, and Search Pad: You can quickly access search features that make your online lives safer and easier, including Search Scan/SafeSearch (which helps protect you from viruses, spyware, and spam while you search) and Search Pad, our note-taking and research application.
• Query assistance: We’ve extended our powerful query assistance into the left-hand column of the page to allow you to easily explore and discover concepts related to your query.
• Image and video search refiners: We also apply this same design framework to our Image and Video Search experiences, where the left-hand column provides powerful ways to explore the things you care about most; including travel destinations, music artists, movies, TV shows, and celebrities.

If you haven’t tried it yet, let us take you on our tour that explains all of the features we delivered with this new experience.

Structuring the Web

We launched Yahoo! SearchMonkey in May 2008. Throughout 2009 we’ve continued to accelerate the adoption of structured data across the Web and empower developers to innovate in search. In May 2009, we shared with you the key milestones with Yahoo! Search BOSS and SearchMonkey: At that time, we had over 70 million enhanced SearchMonkey results viewed by users every day; and we increased the adoption of RDFa structured data by 413 percent since October, 2008.

By August 2009, we had expanded our coverage for enhanced results to multiple structured object formats including Video, Documents,  Games, Products, Local Businesses, Event, Discussions, and News.

Great Assistance across Yahoo!

In November 2009, we extended our Search Assist features from the Web search boxes to the search box at the top of nearly every property on Yahoo! The new features take you directly to the information you need, whether it is real-time stock quotes or movie trailers. This also includes enhanced search suggestions and ways to easily navigate to your Yahoo! property of choice.

Discover Breaking News on Yahoo!

Starting in November 2009, we began including relevant photos, videos, and tweets about a breaking news story within the Yahoo! News Shortcut on our Search results page. By including more of this real-time content, we make it easier for you to find all the information you need about an unfolding news event in one place.

Local Searches Made Easier

We’re focused on making it easier to search for local businesses. Starting in December 2009, we display more Yahoo! local business shortcuts when you search for a business, even if you don’t include your location in your query. We also began providing new functionality directly within the local shortcut to refine results by neighborhood or nearby city right on the search results page. This further enhances an already great shortcut that provides more of the information you care about most directly on the search results page; including ratings, reviews, photos, and directions.

Twitter in Web Search

In addition to our News shortcut that was already showing tweets for breaking news topics, in December 2009 we started integrating recent tweets from Twitter directly as a dedicated shortcut on our Web search results page when you search for buzzy topics. By providing this Twitter shortcut, we make it easy for you to see tweets about topics that may not be in news headlines.

Great Multimedia Search

Building on the great feedback we received, we added even more entertainment refiners within our Image and Video Search experiences. These new refiners help you explore your favorite TV shows and movies, celebrities, or the albums and songs from your favorites music artists. By tapping into the “Web of Things,” we have created intelligent contextual refiners to narrow down your search intent intuitively.

Shashi Seth joins Yahoo! Search

Finally, a very exciting change for Yahoo! Search happened just last month when Shashi Seth joined us as the Senior Vice President for the Yahoo! Search Products team. We’re sure that Shashi will help us keep the ideas flowing as we continue to make Yahoo! Search better and incorporate Yahoo! Search into all Yahoo! products.

We’ve been working hard to not only make it even easier for you to find the information you need, but also to enable you to discover more than you ever expected when you use Yahoo! Search. We’re continually focused on improving the Yahoo! Search experience, so check back often as we bring you more enhancements in the coming months.

Larry Cornett
Vice President, Consumer Products, Yahoo! Search

If you’ve tuned into any kind of news in the past few weeks, you know Super Bowl 44 is coming this Sunday, when the Indianapolis Colts play the New Orleans Saints. As excitement builds before kickoff, we’ve seen search spikes by people looking for information on key Colts Peyton Manning and Dwight Freeney, Super Bowl predictions and picks, commercials, and more. For example, people search more for logos of the opposing team!

Here’s a look at some of the search trends around Sunday’s upcoming showdown in at Dolphin Stadium in South Florida:

Kickoff Time – No need to click further – the game starts at 6:25 p.m. EST.

Betting and Predictions –NFL.com’s user poll has the Saints favored to win, and searchers are surely curious about the team. Users are searching for the Saints 53 percent more often than the Colts on the Wednesday before the big game. But if MVP is awarded by search popularity, make that call in favor of Peyton Manning. And for all the single ladies searching for “Peyton Manning married,” we regret to report that he has been married to his wife Ashley since 2001.

Commercials – Searchers are looking for the Doritos and Budweiser commercials, both of which are going to be picked by fans in advance of the event.

Half-Time Show – We’re hoping the set malfunctions clear up in time for the big show, which features British rockers The Who this year.

Past Super Bowls – Bowl trivia is big, especially at parties, so Yahoo! users are digging around for stats on previous big games. Queries are for games from specific years and for “Super Bowl trivia.”

Wallpaper and logos – The Saints are ahead with queries for wallpapers, but more users overall are looking for Colts logos. Interestingly, people are interested in the logos of the opposing team. In Louisiana, searches for the Colts’ logo had a one day jump of 150 whereas Indiana jumped 67 percent on “Saints logo” searches.

Songs – Almost 92 percent of song searches were for the Who Dat song. Catchy lyric? Or, predictor of success? All we can say is that it’s a silent minority looking for the “Colts fight song” online.

Food – Queries on “Super Bowl party food ideas” and recipes are way up as people pick which wings to try out on their pals at parties across the nation. “Super Bowl appetizers” is also a popular query. Here in Yahoo! Search, we prefer guacamole.

Home field advantage – Our sports specialist dug around for some information on what users were looking for in Indiana and Louisiana. He found that “Super Bowl tickets” searches in Louisiana had a buzz score 50 points higher than the same search in Indiana, so the Who Dat Nation may have the home field advantage. If history is an indicator, they can break out the beads on Bourbon Street now. The Pittsburgh Steelers carried the buzz score advantage over the Arizona Cardinals in 2009 by 15 buzz points, and they carried the game. Can anyone translate that into a points spread?

Remember, you can use our sports shortcut on Yahoo! Search to see real time scores and other information about your favorite team. Follow Yahoo! Sports coverage of the Super Bowl on Sunday at Sports.Yahoo.com.

Jessica Hilberman
Yahoo! Search

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

The Yahoo! Search engineering teams are rolling out updates to crawling, indexing, and ranking algorithms.  Similar to previous updates, you may notice some ranking changes and page shuffling during the process, which we expect to complete over the next few days.

Thank you for the feedback, letting us know the community still finds these Weather Reports helpful.  To share your thoughts on this latest update, please visit the Site Explorer Suggestion Board.

Dan Rampton

Program Manager, Yahoo! Search