A recent Lehman Brothers report called Yahoo Answers, the Web portal's new user-generated question-and-answer program, a "source of differentiation within the company's search capabilities" that could
have a positive long-term impact on Yahoo's position in search. The report said Answers could attract incremental users and increase the amount of time people spend on Yahoo's sites, thus creating
more opportunities to sell display ads and sponsored links. Douglas Anmuth, the analyst who wrote the report, said Yahoo Answers gives the company an advantage over so-called "knowledge search," or
search based on collective user knowledge--and thus has an edge over rival Google's less socially oriented online classifieds service, Google Base. According to comScore Networks, an industry research
firm, Yahoo Answers received 7.2 million unique visitors in April.
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