• D: All Things Digital, Thursday, February 19, 2009 11:30 AM

On Wednesday, Yahoo celebrated the fifth birthday of its search engine by adding another Google-like feature to its service: pictures and video. Indeed, the new offerings are Yahoo's version of Universal Search, which is Google's integration of video and photo images into regular search results.

According to Kara Swisher, Yahoo has been working on various versions of this and other improvements to its search engine for a year. The ultimate idea, she says, is to integrate search and display ads on the results page, "giving it the cool-looking attributes of display and the more measurable qualities of paid listings." Time will tell whether or not this yields better click-through rates for Yahoo, and helps stave off the relentless advance of Microsoft-which wants to buy Yahoo Search.

Meanwhile, Yahoo did have cause for celebration on the occasion of its search engine's fifth birthday: the latest comScore figures show that the Web giant has scratched away some U.S. search share from Google, up to 21% in January from last June's low of 19.6%. Google fell from 63.5% in December to 63% last month.

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