Yahoo: We’re still in the search game

Yahoo is currently holding a press event at its headquarters in Sunnyvale, Calif. to highlight its efforts in search. That may seem odd, since Yahoo announced a deal last year for Microsoft to provide its search results. But Shashi Seth, Yahoo’s new senior vice president of search products, said there’s still plenty of room for the company to innovate.

Seth noted that he only started at Yahoo a few weeks ago, and he joined because the company convinced him that this will be “the team that changes the face of search.” It’s a misconception that the Microsoft deal means Yahoo may no longer be in the search game, he argued.

“Yahoo has been in search, is in search, and will continue to be in search in the future,” Seth said. True, Microsoft is handling Yahoo’s back end — crawling of the web and indexing of results — but he added, “Search, in my opinion, is at the tip of the iceberg. There’s a lot of innovation to be done at the front end of search.”

Seth then made three main points about what Yahoo is doing to combat its declining marketshare. First, it will continue to integrate search into its existing properties, so that there’s a strong search experience on Yahoo News, for example. Second, Yahoo will continue to put a lot of energy into mobile search and search in the Asian market, where there will probably be plenty of growth in the future. The third point is less about Yahoo’s search technology, and more about how it publicizes that technology.

“As we go on this journey, I want you to come along,” Seth told the reporters in the room. To that end, he said Yahoo will be working hard to share its search products and strategy with the press.

I’ll be covering further details on Yahoo’s search announcements today as they’re revealed.