The recent Yahoo-to-Bing transition means that organic search results conducted on Yahoo are now powered by Microsoft, but that doesn't mean that Yahoo wants to eliminate itself from the search world.

The recent Yahoo-to-Bing transition means that organic search results conducted on Yahoo are now powered by Microsoft, but that doesn't mean that Yahoo wants to eliminate itself from the search world. The company announced this week that it is making some updates to Yahoo Search this fall, which it hopes will improve users' experiences.

Kaushal Kurapati, senior director of product management for Yahoo Search, says that the site will now focus on creating visually rich content to both answer consumer queries and offer entertaining results pages. It's unclear how this may alter Bing-powered search results on the site, but it gives evidence that Yahoo is trying to live up to its claims that it will remain a player in the search market in spite of the recent organic search transition.

One of the ways Yahoo will achieve a compelling search experience is through slideshows that display images related to hot search topics. "You'll be able to browse through pictures from the entire Yahoo network without ever leaving the results page," Kurapati explains.

Additionally, the site is enhancing its entertainment search features. It will offer users richer content results to better answer their entertainment-related queries instead of sending them on click hunts. This seems similar to the Bing Entertainment features launched by Microsoft, which Brafton reported in on June. The Bing Entertainment feature posts answer to queries directly on results pages so users can make more immediate entertainment decisions.

Yahoo will also unveil an updated news search experience that offers consumers conveniently organized videos, articles, tweets and images related to breaking headlines in various industries. With this feature, the site seems to be taking a page out of Google's book. Brafton reported that Google enhanced its Google News page to cater to readers in July, offering them clustered results and source ranking options.

Marketers should keep these changes in mind and plan content marketing accordingly to make their websites ready for the visually-oriented Yahoo search experience. Even though Bing now powers Yahoo search results, consumers are still turning to Yahoo.com to conduct their queries. Just yesterday, Brafton reported that comScore's latest search rankings reveal that Yahoo sites ranked second in the search market, accounting for 21 percent of total core searches in August.  

Katherine Griwert is Brafton's Marketing Director. She's practiced content marketing, SEO and social marketing for over five years, and her enthusiasm for new media has even deeper roots. Katherine holds a degree in American Studies from Boston College, and her writing is featured in a number of web publications.