• Silicon Valley Insider, Tuesday, October 2, 2007 11 AM

First thing's first: Yahoo's unveiled several new changes to Yahoo Search, adding video, audio and picture results to text searches, and drawing on user data collected across its sites to help refine searches. Considering that Yahoo has a larger breadth of content and a bigger overall user base (right now) than rivals Google and Ask.com, the changes could be significant.

However, they're not likely to help Yahoo deliver more revenue per search. According to a Compete study, Yahoo is already more effective at getting users to click on its results, but it simply can't compete with Google when it comes to scale. Google searches may result in fewer clicks because there are simply so many of them, which is precisely why advertiser demand is higher on Google. Yahoo is unlikely to reverse that trend, and if not, advertisers will continue to pay more for Google ads--which means that the only way for Yahoo to improve revenue per search is to outsource it to Google. Search improvement may not be enough.

Separately, Yahoo announced a new mobile search deal with Telefonica, making Yahoo Search the global telecom giant's default search engine in 15 countries across Latin America and Europe.

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