New York — Attempting to encourage users to further engage with a Web site’s content may be an established practice, but new methods are always being tried. Yahoo is previewing “Infinite Browse,” a Yahoo News feature that adds relevant search content below news stories. Yahoo, which is vying for eyeballs with Google and Bing, believes users will consume more content.
Yahoo is well into its consolidation with Microsoft to make Bing its algorithmic search engine, but the Internet pioneer is still responsible for the search user interface. The company said it is previewing a new module called “Infinite Browse,” for Yahoo News, which adds a small window of search results, such as images, videos and slide shows below news stories.
The aim is to motivate users to continue searching and consuming content within the Yahoo network, which Yahoo executives called search by clicking at a February event. Yahoo has inspired users to “explore” its pages via search and other means, while rival Microsoft and its Bing technology has pitched itself as a “decision” engine.
“These components might look simple, but they harness an array of Yahoo! technologies and search sciences to complement the work of editors at Yahoo! News,” Caroline Tsay, director of product management, and Marc Davis, a product manager, wrote in a blog post. Both work for Yahoo Search.
Because it is only being flight tested with a small group of users, most folks would not see it on Yahoo News, so the company provided this screenshot of the feature.
The blog post explained, “Boxes like this appear below articles on Yahoo! News, offering you more information on the topic you are interested in.” Images, videos, articles, slideshows, and search suggestions are all on tap, and early results indicate that, again, engagement has doubled.
The objective is to offer users more content without making them conduct a separate search. Yahoo believes this will make it more convenient for users to consume content, keeping users searching and reading within Yahoo News longer.
“In its first week, our internal data reveals that user engagement with this related search information in Yahoo News is nearly twice the amount we see with similar features,” noted Tsay, and Davis.
If Yahoo can take advantage on “Infinite Browse” to deliver more ads in front of users, it will be a nice attempt to bolster a company that has fallen behind the pact of Google, Twitter and Facebook in relevance.
Yahoo also unleashed a “Trending Now” list of hot topics to a number of sites: the Yahoo.com homepage, Yahoo Mail, Yahoo Sports, Yahoo News, Yahoo Finance, omg!, and others. Naturally, clicking on a specific topic, such as “LeBron James,” takes the user to a page designed specifically about the player. The addition of trending topics comes a growing body of research examines the affect of popularity across social media.