The Return Of Yahoo Search

Last week I reported that Yahoo Search posted on Twitter that it will be making search cool again. Ace I posted on Search Engine Land yesterday, we got more evidence that Yahoo is really moving forward with improving its search service.

Last night, Jim Lanzone, the CEO of Yahoo (more about him below), responded to Greg Sterling and myself about Yahoo getting into search:

Greg, I think you and Barry know – there are always new ways around the mountain. No reason to go straight at it. But we’re excited to start exploring again…and will be patient figuring it all out.

— Jim Lanzone (@jlanzone) January 31, 2023

So yes, we got that tweet that I covered last week, followed by a number of other tweets:

Just popping in to remind everyone that we did search before it was cool.

BRB making it cool again.

— Yahoo Search (@YahooSearch) January 20, 2023

But we got a lot more – we have a job listing for a Principal Product Manager, Yahoo Search. The job listing says, “We’re looking for a Product Manager for Search at Yahoo. We are looking for folks that are interested in pushing beyond the status quo to change the way folks interact and use search.”

Jim Lanzone, who was the CEO of Ask.com and worked for several years for Ask.com (previously Ask Jeeves), who is now the CEO at Yahoo. He is a search guy, originally, and I do suspect he will want to do big things again with search. Under Jim, Ask released some incredibly innovative features, like Ask 3D – which Google kind of ripped off with its Universal Search – as some say… So I think, Yahoo Search, under Jim Lanzone might be an interesting Yahoo Search to look at.

As I also said on Search Engine Land, Brian Provost, SVP & GM, Yahoo posted on LinkedIn about this job listing and wrote, “There’s going to be so much innovation in Search in the coming years and there aren’t many places where you can immediately have an impact this big. Would love to hear from you if you have a passion for Search and building product experiences.”

This is exciting – I suspect it will take a year or so to see anything – but I am looking forward to it.

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.