Yahoo! Renews & Mixes with Google

After several months of waiting, Yahoo! announced today (during their conference call announcing third quarter profits) that they have extended Google as their search engine partner even though the "Powered by Google" logo and text are gone. In addition, they have mixed up Yahoo! directory entries with Google records in their search results. Instead of having Yahoo! directory entries under the 'Web Sites' heading and Google records under 'Web Pages,' they now both come under 'Web Matches.' Then their is a follow-up search option to just search the directory under the "Search in . . . Directory" link in the upper right corner. The advanced search has also changed significantly. It now looks much more like the Google advanced search. See their What's Changed with Yahoo! Search and Danny Sullivan's report for more details.

I can't say I'm impressed with the change. The division between the directory listing and search engine results was often useful and made it easier to teach the difference between directory results and search engine results. The mixture of results may help on some searches but will probably lead to more confusion on others. And with a greater emphasis on plain search engine results, what is the long term future of the Yahoo directory? If you liked the old Yahoo!, try one of the international versions like Yahoo UK or Yahoo Australia which at least for now still have the old separation.