Yahoo Clues – Re Launched

Yahoo has re-launched Yahoo Clues, a web based trending service that allows users to see what other people are searching on the web. The product initially was launched last year in November. This is being seen as a move which would bring Yahoo and Google head to head for another showdown.

A revamp of the original product on part of Yahoo includes expansion from the initial single page version to include information on searches executed globally with the addition of a map feature depicting the originating point of the search. The map feature covers both Local and Global search aspects.

Although, Google is considered as a synonym for search with over 1billion users, Yahoo of late has been trying to cope up with the rapidly changing search environment. It planned to introduce new search based features like the decision to release Direct Search in India. The advent of varied metrics in search have brought up the rising importance of factors such as demographics, real time search, market insights, local and global variables etc. A joint study by Comscore, Hitwise and Compete says, Google leads the search market with an overall market share of over 65%, Yahoo occupies the second spot with a market share of 15.9%.

“Yahoo Clues is already in use by Yahoo Editorial to spot and understand search trends, then translate this insight into news generation, content programming, or to share with our partners,” said Brian Theodore, director of search products at Yahoo. “In addition, the new Top Trends feature allows our users and editorial team to continuously monitor and browse for interesting or unexpected trends regionally or within a specific demographic” he adds.

The present era of search has re-defined the concept of consumer behavior making it mandatory for search giants to explore and imbibe new features and tools that give users access to the data they are processing. No doubt, Yahoo Clues will compete with Google Trends and Google Insights for Search.