New Search Clothes Yahoo

Yahoo’s done a long conference call about search changes today, as detailed in our Live Blogging Yahoo’s Product Call post. Beginning today, millions are to be included in a test of the new search features, with no specific date on when they’ll roll out to everyone. In a blog post to go with the call from Yahoo, we’re told:

We know that search has been a hot topic over the past few weeks, so we wanted to share with you what the Yahoo! Search team has been focusing on lately. Today, we are announcing a new search page design that makes search more personally relevant and helps people explore the things that matter most to them. It exemplifies how Yahoo! is continuing to innovate in search technology and the user experience.

The changes, which I’ll detail shortly, follow on recent improvements to Yahoo’s Delicious bookmarking service and Flickr photo sharing service. Both of those have search aspects to them, and along with today’s news, gives the impression that Yahoo’s just as busy as ever being innovative in search.

The reality is that all these changes have been in the works for months, by Yahoo employees before their company made clear its intention to get out of the search indexing game. The momentum of work already done will carry Yahoo forward for a bit. It remains uncertain to me whether Yahoo’s talent will remain in the long term. It remains even more uncertain that user interface changes will have any impact on growing Yahoo’s search share. More on that at the end — let’s look at those new features!