Yahoo! Inc (YHOO) revealed its partnership with Yelp Inc (NYSE:YELP) as part of its effort to improve the service and strengthen the competitiveness of its search engine. The tech giant started including snippets of listings and reviews of local businesses in its search results.
Anand Chandrasekaran, senior director of product management at Yahoo! Inc (NASDAQ:YHOO) shared information about the inclusion of Yelp Inc (NYSE:YELP) as one of its local content partners.
In a blog post, Chandrasekaran wrote, “Now when you use Yahoo Search to look up a local business in the U.S. on your smartphone, tablet, or PC, you’ll see user reviews, business information, and star ratings from Yelp. We’ve also added a new photo viewing experience to show high-quality photos from Yelp, other partners, and the businesses themselves.”
He added that Yahoo! Inc (NASDAQ:YHOO) is always seeking to establish great partnerships to provide better experience for its users. Chanrasekaran expressed excitement regarding the inclusion of Yelp Inc (NYSE:YELP) because of its “trusted user content.” The tech giant recently improved its local search and maps experience.
Commenting on the partnership, Collin Gillis, an analyst at BGC Partners said, “I think it’s a reasonable thing for Yahoo to do as part of its daily course of business, but don’t see this individual partnership as being material to Yahoo’s overall outlook at this time.”
Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer recently stated that the company is “long on search” despite the fact that Google Inc (NASDAQ:GOOG) dominates the space. Mayer emphasized the intention of the company to continue to invest in search user experience. According to her, the company wants to make sure that Yahoo users on its network will ultimately get a tremendous experience.
Yahoo! Inc (NASDAQ:YHOO) ranks third in internet search behind Microsoft Corporation’s (NASDAQ:MSFT) Bing and of course Google Inc (NASDAQ:GOOG). Since 2010, the search market share of Yahoo had been declining steadily because of its reliance on Microsoft’s technology to produce search results.
Last year, Yahoo! Inc (NASDAQ:YHOO) posted a 6% increase in search revenue to $1.7 billion. The stock price of the company closed at $37.50 per share on Wednesday.
