Yahoo! has upped the ante on Google. The digital media company has entered into pacts with rival Bing (Microsoft search engine) and handset manufacturer Nokia for getting access to map strengths of its arm NAVTEQ.
“We are going to witness a paradigm shift in the way people search. Mobile devices would dominate the search spectrum in the next three-four years. We are going to offer contextual and more relevant answers to users,” Mr Amit Dayal, Vice-President (Engineering, Search and Marketplaces), told newspersons.
The transition to Bing Algorithm will begin in India in the third quarter.
The tie-up with Bing would save Yahoo! from spending huge investments on hardware and other infrastructure to manage Web index (which contains entries that we get when we pose a query in search engines).
Yahoo! would not to be left behind in the map search segment, Yahoo! tied up with Nokia's arm NAVTEQ to use its content. “We may launch this later this year globally. But we have not decided yet on introducing it in India. For now, we have tied up with a local company for map data,” he said.
But it is not going to be blind accessing map data from NAVTEQ. Yahoo! team would come up with an interface to allow users to extract more relevant map info.
Search Direct
Quoting Comscore data, he said Yahoo! share in the US search market had gone up by 1.7 per cent in just one month after it launched Search Direct.
Indian users, however, would have to wait for a few months to experience this.
Search Direct would predict answers as users key in queries. Besides prompts, as offered by its competitor Google, Yahoo! would pop-up one quick, most relevant answer.
Yahoo!, which introduced Contextual Search and Direct Display Builder in India this month, would effect Bing Algorithm transition in the third quarter. It indicated that Search Direct would be introduced by the year-end.