Yahoo upgrades search engine

Yahoo believes its approach is more comprehensive than its rivals' in several key areas, including music, movies and photos.

For example, by drawing upon the vast library stored in its popular Flickr service, Yahoo has built an image index much larger than any of its rivals, said Vish Makhijani, the company's senior vice president of search.

"Our goal is to be best-of-breed in certain categories," he said.

Yahoo is hoping the changes will lure back Web surfers who defected to Google.

Although its search engine ranks second in usage, Yahoo has been steadily losing ground _ a distressing pattern that has contributed to the company's sagging profits and stock price.

In August, Yahoo had a 23 percent share of the U.S. search market compared with 56.5 percent for Google, according to the most recent data from comScore Media Metrix. At the beginning of 2005, Yahoo's market share stood at 32 percent, just slightly behind Google at 35 percent, based on different measurement techniques used at that time by Media Metrix.

Even a small gain in search market share figures to help boost Yahoo's profits because the company already has introduced a system for displaying ads relevant to search requests that executives say has spurred more commission-generating clicks on text-based ad links.

The success of this new commercial approach, dubbed "Panama," indicates Yahoo could make more money if people use its search engine more frequently.

Makhijani said he could feel a more positive vibe emerging as Yahoo's engineers developed the new search tools during the past nine months.

"Our sense of confidence is greater because of all the work we have put in on the new platform," he said. "The proof will be in the pudding, but we think we can bring a fundamental change to the Web search experience."

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