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.
“Health is not sports, news, entertainment or finance, but it is still a very vital category in terms of what users are demanding on a day-to-day basis,” said Damon Cronkey, regional business lead for autos, health and technology at Yahoo. “We are partnering with Healthline to accelerate the business.”
Currently, Yahoo Health is rated as the third most visited Internet health destination, reaching more than 11 million unique users each month, trialing behind WebMD and Everyday Health, according to comScore. With nearly seven million visitors, Healthline was ranked fifth, but the company also powers health-related content and services on more than 40 other sites.
With Healthline association, Yahoo gets a technology partner that already caters to more than 90 million users a month with the most contextually relevant and clinically accurate health information available on the Internet and offers targeted opportunities for advertisers.
Under the three-year partnership, the terms of which the companies declined to disclose, Yahoo says Healthline will “work upon Yahoo’s existing (health) content to develop, manage and host” a variety of medical and health-related content, as well as tools in the second quarter of the year.
Some details: For instance, Healthline has formulated a search engine for medical information that understands the relationships between various diseases and between diseases, drugs and treatments. It helps users finds information easier than a traditional, text-based search engine. Healthline also has search tools to find doctors and other medical information.
“Yahoo is the dominant portal for millions of Internet users and this partnership will provide these visitors with a world-class health destination,” said West Shell III, Chairman and CEO of Healthline Networks.
“Yahoo is planning to provide a more healthy user experience to increase engagement. With Yahoo’s brand and unparalleled programming skills combined with Healthline’s taxonomy-driven health search, content and advertising solutions, the enhanced health portal will be a big win for consumers and advertisers alike.”
The companies stated that Yahoo Health will now employ the Healthline’s search technology and boast its applications. And Yahoo Health is also joining Healthline’s Media Network, which will let companies buy display ad space on Yahoo Health, although Yahoo will still sell ads on the site. “We will be handling all the remnant inventory,” says Healthline CEO West Shell III.
“Being able to deliver quick and easy access to the right information is hard to do,” said Shell III. “Our search technology and navigation tools are designed to help people with that.”
“Yahoo is pledged to investing in and expanding our Health offering to provide more of what users are looking for,” said Damon Cronkey, senior director and regional business lead for Autos, Health & Tech at Yahoo!. “Healthline delivers a powerful health information technology platform along with unique applications and development expertise that will help Yahoo! provide a greater experience for our consumers and advertisers.”
The Health channel includes some bloggers, but the majority of the content is licensed from third parties. “With Healthline, we are adding to the list of things that we are already offering,” Cronkey said.
Healthline, which is based in San Francisco, is backed by Aetna Inc., General Electric Co., Investor Growth Capital, Kaiser Permanente, Reed Elsevier Inc., U.S. News & World Report and VantagePoint Venture Partners.
Shares of Yahoo, based in Sunnyvale, Calif., fell 28 cents to $16.25 in afternoon trading.