Search site Yahoo! has revealed the latest move in its bid to catch up with its market-dominating rival, Google. The new update focuses heavily on visual content and will see high-quality imagery added to the site’s search results pages.

In June, Yahoo! revealed its significantly renovated search interface to users and also revamped its news offering. The company said in a blog post that it wanted to make the site more “beautiful and immersive”.

According to Yahoo! Search’s product director, Girish Krishnan, users, when looking for information, will be met with a collection of “gorgeous” images related to their query.

In a post on the firm’s Tumblr page, he went on to say:

“This partnership allows us to display high-quality photos from award-winning photographers.”

Using the new interface, Yahoo! also aims to provide users with experiences that are directly affected by their interests and the searches they may have carried out in the past. This will be further enhanced for those who have an active account on the site.

As users will now be able to personalise and customise the search results they receive, the update could be good news for businesses and marketers looking to reach consumers. For instance, if a user has sought details of a company’s product or service in the past, they are more likely to be exposed to similar information in future searches.

Seeing as Google still has the lion’s share of the UK search market – at 89.69% – Yahoo! still has a lot of catching up to do. The firm, which is based in Sunnyville, California, only accounts for the queries of 2.92% of internet info-hunters. However, the site does still have a loyal user-base, which is why many marketers choose to focus their SEO efforts across the range of platforms for the maximal effect.

Graeme Parton

Graeme has experience creating content for online sources and for the radio, and at university he studied Multimedia Journalism.