Internet search titan Yahoo unveiled new "front doors" to the world with the online debut of its revamped web portal, customized for the cultures of each of its markets based on the search patterns of its 188 million users.
The redesigned page includes more interactive features that reduce the need to click through to other pages to review the weather, check e-mail, listen to music or monitor local traffic conditions.
Sunnyvale, Calif.-based Yahoo regards the latest changes as the most dramatic renovations made to its front page since the site’s 1994 debut as a bare-bones directory developed by Stanford University students Jerry Yang and David Filo.
As the Internet powerhouse strives to remain the world’s most popular online destination and strengthen its advertising appeal, the overhaul marks the first facelift to Yahoo’s home page since September 2004.
The new Yahoo page mixes news updates and entertainment with tools for searching, connecting, sharing and communicating online, according to Yahoo’s vice president of "Front Doors" Tapan Bhat.
"Just because users are happy with the status quo, that does not mean we cannot make it better," Bhat told reporters while showing off the redesign at the company’s Sunnyvale, California, campus.
The new look is long overdue, said Jupiter Research analyst David Card. "The site was getting pretty long in the tooth and looking pretty old fashioned," he said. "Now, it looks clean, crisp and modern."
Even so, Card believes Yahoo’s upgrades would not impress younger, cutting-edge Web surfers who are spending an increasing amount of time hanging out at MySpace.com. "They did not really push the envelope very hard."
Yahoo employed the gamut of research methods to figure out what its 188 million users around the globe might like on the page, according to Bhat. "We managed it worldwide, but we allowed countries to create differences that are cultural," he said. "The people in each country get to decide what things are relevant to them."
For example, Yahoo users in Korea tend to be more "search-centric,” so that feature was emphasized, Bhat said. Traffic feeds got more prominence in the car-crazed US market as compared to the French or Hong Kong pages, he pointed out. In Singapore, news was emphasized over entertainment based on search patterns there.
A key aspect of Yahoo’s new front doors was a "personal assistant" programmed to scour the Internet and retrieve information suited to people’s interests, according to Bhat.
Another new feature on the page called “Yahoo Pulse,” offers recommendations and insights about cultural trends culled from the website’s 402 million users worldwide.
Yahoo Pulse uses the "treasure trove" of data from the search engine’s "close to half-a-billion users" to reveal trends in anything from travel or music to clothing or restaurants, according to Bhat.
We are taking the power away from self-appointed arbiters of taste, Bhat said. "We have millions of people around the world to tell us what is hot. We do not need some guy getting paid lots of money with a false accent telling us."
"Our goal is to have the best page on the Internet," said Dan Rosensweig, Yahoo’s chief operating officer. "We feel like this redesign does something great for everybody."
Yahoo settled on the final redesign, code-named "Spirit," after months of testing with selected users. As another precaution, the new look would not show up as the default page of Yahoo.com for several more months.
"Any time you touch the most visited page on the Internet, it is going to feel like a big change and we think this is a really big change," Rosensweig said.
Microsoft Corp.’s MSN and Time Warner Inc.’s AOL, the two most visited websites after Yahoo, also have tweaked their looks during the past year.
Although Google still provides a page featuring little else than its Internet-leading search engine, it also offers an option that enables users to customize the home page to suit their personal tastes.
An enhancement to the search box also includes access to a "Yahoo Answers" service that taps into collective knowledge for replies to direct questions.
Prominent ads on the page appeal to companies seeking to establish brand recognition with Yahoo’s audience, Bhat explained. "Happy users and happy advertisers is how we make money," he said. "This is the Super Bowl of advertising. There is no other medium where one ad can get to so many people."
Reaction to the redesigned portal by users so far has been "a big ‘Wow’," Bhat said.
In April, Yahoo led the pack with 105.4 million unique U.S. visitors, an 11% increase from last year, according to Nielsen/NetRatings Inc. MSN ranked second with 92.8 million visitors, a 6% increase from last year, followed closed by Google, whose traffic surged 27% during the past year to 92.1 million. AOL’s traffic remained flat at 70.4 million, Nielsen/NetRatings said.
Like other widely visited websites, Yahoo must balance its desire to keep pace with the Internet’s constantly shifting trends with the recognition that changing things too dramatically might alienate a large number of users comfortable with the status quo.
Yahoo is making the upgrade as it battles for traffic with longtime rivals MSN, AOL and Google Inc. while also trying to fend off an intensifying threat posed by the rise of social networking sites such as MySpace.com.
Yahoo intended to tinker with the page as people tried it and "would not flip the switch," committing to the new design, until "all users are happy," Bhat said.
Meanwhile, MySpace’s traffic — consisting mostly of teens and young adults — has more than quadrupled during the past year to 38.4 million U.S. visitors. What is more, MySpace’s visitors viewed a total of 19 billion pages on the site in April, surpassing Google (11.9 billion pages), MSN (11.5 billion pages) and AOL (6.8 billion pages).
Yahoo remains the Web’s most viewed site, serving up 31.2 billion pages in April, but some analysts believe MySpace’s rapid growth foreshadows a changing of the guard.
"The bar keeps getting raised," said Gartner Inc. analyst Mike McGuire. "I think you are going to see constant tweaking because of sites like MySpace."
Remaining the most trafficked and viewed website is important to Yahoo because those measures are critical to the advertisers that provide the company with most of its profits.
As it is, Yahoo’s earnings have not been growing rapidly as Google’s — a factor that has weighed on Yahoo’s stock price, which has dropped by 21% so far this year. Meanwhile, Google’s stock price has declined by 9%.
Yahoo’s new portal is being previewed in the United States and Europe, and should be online in Asia and South American markets in the months to come, Bhat said.