Sunnyvale, California -- Yahoo on Thursday said that it is unfolding some new search improvements for Yahoo Sports and Yahoo News search topic pages, all designed to give the user what they are looking for, quickly and easily, on this April Fools Day, and Yahoo's Tricia Stream quoted as saying to WebProNews that it is “no joke.”

The new focused search sections are part of what Yahoo represented at a February search event, which also usher in new search tweaks like “Sketch-A-Search,” a twist on location-based mobile searching.

The new capabilities will also include new filters and showed search topics. The attributes are configured to help users better target their searches through specifically targeted vertical search techniques.

San Francisco -- In an effort to strengthen the popularity of its online health channel, Internet pioneer Yahoo Inc., on Thursday said that it is entering into a broad partnership with a specialist, Healthline Networks, a leading provider of intelligent health related content and applications, which would boost to its health section.

While Yahoo is one of the most renowned destinations on the Web, reaching around 600 million people worldwide every month and over 75% of U.S. Internet users. Although, Yahoo Health lacks the same penchant or highest-priority media sites.

But Yahoo's health section, accompanied sites on technology and autos, remains an important category as the company doubles down on its effort to offer top-quality content to attract large audiences and premium advertisers.

Sunnyvale, California -- Yahoo on Wednesday notified members of its Yahoo Publisher Network (YPN) that it will soon be shutting down its contextual-advertising network by the end of the April, ceding the market to already-dominant Google, as it retools to focus on premium display.

The Yahoo Publisher Network Beta, a contextual advertising platform -- much similar Google's AdSense through which small online publishers, such as individual bloggers, easily monetize their sites on a cost-per-click basis, will officially shut down as of April 30, according to a memo sent to publishers.

Apparently, publishers are being directed the Chitika ad network, which has setup this section on its website to “make the transition from Yahoo! Publisher Network as easy as possible”.

Sunnyvale, California -- Last December, Internet search pioneer Yahoo promised that it would make tighter integration with Facebook Connect across its properties worldwide, now the Sunnyvale, Calif., company continues to expand that relationship with the latest implementation enabling users to update their Facebook status from within Yahoo Mail. Yahoo began to extend the capability from Monday evening in “select markets,” it said in a blog post, though it did not specify which ones.

While these new capabilities are only being spread out to a few select markets initially, the company said it will be pushed out more broadly over the coming weeks and months. However, Facebook users will be able to sign into their accounts right from the Yahoo Mail home page and will also be able to update their Facebook status from their in-boxes and also see their friends' Facebook profile photos in their in-boxes, according to the company.

Sunnyvale, California -- Last week, Internet search pioneer Yahoo has unveiled two new search applications for the iPhone at the C.T.I.A. conference in Las Vegas, which allow users to speak or doodle their search terms rather than type them. One of the applications called “Sketch-a-Search” app, does what the name implies, letting your fingertip inscribe a shape on the map that will become your searching area. In addition to a more generic Yahoo Search iPhone App, is an integrated search service for the Apple iPhone and includes a number of interesting features.

The new app also delivers a variety of new local tools and elements that can enhance a Yahoo search based on a user's current location and also add related maps using location-based technology, including voice search and “Shake to Clear,” which performs exactly what the name describes: clears the last search when you shake the phone.

Sunnyvale, California -- Yahoo may have lost its search deal with T-Mobile in the U.S. earlier this month, but the Internet pioneer on Thursday said that Yahoo and Spanish telecommunications network operator Telefónica España entered into an alliance as the exclusive search provider to power mobile searches and sponsored-search advertising on Telefonica's emocion mobile portal in Spain replacing Google.

The new partnership builds on a two-and-half year old association with Telefonica, Yahoo was already the sole search engine on Telefonica's mobile portals in 15 European and Latin American countries. But the partnership especially left out two of Telefonica's largest markets -- Germany and Spain.

Sunnyvale, California -- Yahoo Inc., on Wednesday beefed up its efforts to lure more sports fans with the announcement that it has agreed to buy Citizen Sports, a U.S. startup company that develops sports-related applications for social networking sites such as Facebook and Apple's iPhone devices.

Citizen Sports is joining Yahoo, likely in part to help improve the social-networking efforts of Yahoo's content. (Screenshot by: news.eBrandz.com)

Yahoo, for several months indicated that it would be buying more companies and it has finally announced the acquisition of sports startup Citizen Sports, in a statement but did not disclose financial terms. Technology blog All Things Digital estimated the value of CitizenSports.com at between 40 million US dollars and 50 million US dollars.

Sunnyvale, California -- A big catch for Demand Media caught Sunnyvale, Internet portal by surprise. Yahoo Inc.'s senior vice president and head of North American sales and market development chief “Joanne Bradford”, is leaving the company to join private online content start-up Demand Media Inc., becoming the latest executive to depart the Web giant's ranks.

The departure of Bradford, a former executive at Microsoft Corp, comes as a surprise to Yahoo executives, as the Sunnyvale, Calif., Internet powerhouse is in the midst of a reorientation effort led by Chief Executive Officer Carol Bartz.

The news was confirmed in a statement hours after it was first reported by Kara Swisher at AllThingsDigital. “Joanne Bradford has decided to leave Yahoo to pursue a new undertaking. Joanne will be working with the team over the coming weeks to enable a smooth transition.”

Sunnyvale, California -- Yahoo has made its way to Hollywood, it will soon be the hub for information about movies, TV shows, and the celebrities who star in them. Its TV Portal is one of Yahoo's strongest verticals. The Sunnyvale, Calif., company unveiled several upgrades to its search engine this morning, quoting the popularity of entertainment-related searches, Yahoo's search results have gone Hollywood with the announcement of new search shortcuts for TV shows and celebrities.

Yahoo is attempting to maximize the potential of Yahoo TV to generate site traffic and engagement to its site, and all the improvements are meant to make entertainment-related queries turn up much better results. Enter the Yahoo TV Shortcuts right smack into your entertainment-related search results pages.

Sunnyvale, California -- Last December, Yahoo announced that it would be unfurling deep integration of many of its popular products and services with Facebook Connect, essentially outsourcing all things social to the world's most popular social network. Today marks the fulfillment of that promise of this partnership, with Yahoo Contacts now connected to Facebook.

The benefits are obvious. This indicates that not only Yahoo empowers you to import contacts from Gmail and Windows Live Hotmail, but now Yahoo allows you to add your Facebook friends' email addresses to your Yahoo Contacts via Facebook Connect.

Sunnyvale, California -- In an attempt to lure back Web surfers who are spending more time on social networking sites, Internet portal Yahoo Inc. has inked a deal with Twitter to integrate Twitter's real-time content updates across both properties, as the company seeks to enhance the appeal of its online properties with popular social networking features.

Under the partnership, Yahoo users will be able to view the short, 140-character messages created by Twitter users, directly onto several Yahoo properties, including the company's home page, Yahoo Mail and Yahoo Sports. Yahoo users will also be able to directly update their Twitter status from Yahoo and easily share content that they see there with their Twitter followers.

The move, which Yahoo made public late on Tuesday, has made a similar deal with Facebook, the world's No.1 social networking site a couple of months, expanding the partnership to make it easier for users to share Facebook status updates and other information on Yahoo or share Yahoo sports scores or Flickr photos on Facebook.

Sunnyvale, California -- As Yahoo continues to take stock of its non-performing properties, the company, Yahoo Tech has failed to make the cut. According to reports, Yahoo is closing down Yahoo Tech, the consumer-focused tech site it introduced four years ago. The technology vertical site has been given pull its shutter down on March 11, and will absorb everything of value (including visitors) into Yahoo! News.

As of March 11, 2010, Yahoo Tech will follow the way of Briefcase, Farechase, GeoCities, Go, and Jumpcut. Speaking on its blog, Yahoo informed users that, as of next month the four-year-old site will be closing. All personal details and profiles for the site will be detailed too. Rather, visitors to the site will be redirected to Yahoo! Technology News where they will continue to have access to the best technology content available online.

New York -- Renewing a longstanding link, Internet pioneer Yahoo Inc. and the Associated Press announced that they have forged a deal to keep the AP's articles, photos and videos to appear on the Yahoo News site, according to a report in the Wall Street Journal on Monday.

Yahoo has managed to beat rivals Google Inc. and Microsoft Corp. by agreeing to the new system that the AP is developing to track how and where its articles are published on the Internet. Neither side furnished details, making it unclear whether The A.P., a nonprofit company, had wrested more money from the relationship, or what it might mean for the company's talks with Google and Microsoft.

San Francisco -- Google has finally had enough with Internet Explorer 6. Web developers have long been advising Internet users to discard IE6 for years. But now, the search titan at long last decided to join the cause. Beginning March 1, Google has decided to phase out support for “Internet Explorer 6” on its Google Docs and Google Sites services, the browser identified as the weak link in a “sophisticated and targeted” cyber attack on the search engine, the company said Friday.

The company on Friday warned users of Google Apps and Google Sites that it will soon terminate support for older browsers in about one month. It suggested individuals and firms to upgrade “at an earliest possible”.

Sunnyvale, California -- Yahoo Inc.'s advertising business exhibited further signs of transformation as the Internet company reversed losses of a year ago and posted its best quarterly net profit on Tuesday since Carol Bartz took over as chief executive of the Internet company.

The Sunnyvale, California-based Yahoo on Tuesday, swung to a profit of $153 million, or 11 cents share, for the fourth quarter, compared to a loss of $303 million, or 22 cents a share, the same period a year ago. In the fourth quarter of 2008, Yahoo had taken more than $500 million in writedowns and charges related to layoffs and its international business.

However, revenue in the fourth quarter, continued to slide around $1.7 billion, down 4% from $1.8 billion a year ago. However, the drop was an improvement over the third quarter, when revenue was down 12% year to year.

San Francisco -- For the longest time, the default search provider in Ubuntu Linux has been Google, but this is going to change in the next release -- Rick Spencer of Canonical, the group behind the most-popular Ubuntu Linux distribution, disclosed today that it has forged a revenue sharing alliance with Yahoo, which will become the default search provider in the Mozilla Firefox browser in the upcoming 10.04 version (aka “Lucid Lynx”) of the operating system, scheduled to release April 29.

Absolute terms of the alliance have not been disclosed, but as part of the deal, the in-built Firefox Web browser in Ubuntu will be configured to use Yahoo as the default search engine upon installation.

Sunnyvale, California -- To help things run smoothly for new advertisers, next week Yahoo is ready to release two Sponsored Search product with two new features, which the company says will provide advertisers with more transparency into and control over their accounts. This time the company is releasing Network Distribution, and Import Campaigns.

The new features will be accessible to its business customers in less than two weeks, according to David Pann, VP of Yahoo's search advertising division. He further added that Yahoo's investment in targeting tools provides another option for advertisers to reach consumers -- an alternative to Google AdWords. So the hope is that these tools will end up in Microsoft's search platform and adCenter.

San Francisco -- Beginning soon around mid-March, Yahoo Shopping will no more be a solo entity. Yahoo announced today that it is incorporating Yahoo Shopping with comparison shopping search engine PriceGrabber, to handle some of the technical details, and it will be able to make one more cutback thanks to the adjustment.

A post on the Yahoo Developer Blog explained, “We have finalized to enter into a “strategic partnership” with PriceGrabber to power the Product Submit functionality of Yahoo! Shopping as of March 11, 2010.” PriceGrabber will manage all the product listings and split resulting revenue with Yahoo, as a result of these changes, Yahoo! will no longer provide the Shopping Web Services API, including Shopping Results to you, although Yahoo will continue to sell ads on the Yahoo Shopping site.

Sunnyvale, California -- Attempting to spread out its original content offerings, Yahoo has entered into a partnership with former NBC Entertainment Co-Chairman Ben Silverman's Electus production house to develop and produce multiple originally branded content for the Web portal and its advertising associates in a deal that will likely be announced sometime later this week, according to a press release.

Silverman directed NBC's programming from 2007 to 2009, and prior to that pioneered Reveille Productions, which is credited for developing the U.S. version of “The Office” and “Ugly Betty.” His tenure also coincided with a slip in the ratings for NBC, however, hastened by flops such as the “Knight Rider” remake and “Kath and Kim.”

Las Vegas -- Today, Yahoo has announced several new partnerships involved with its Connected TV, a wide release of the Widget Developer Kit, and other device manufacturers and content providers as the web company attempts to deliver Internet services to the coming generation of network-connected TVs, on such devices as home media boxes, Blu-ray players, and cable and IPTV set top boxes.

“Consumers are in love with their televisions, watching more TV, and asking for Internet connectivity to further enhance their viewing experience,” said Arlo Rose, senior director of Yahoo! Connected TV.