14 DAY TRIAL // Yahoo hasn’t given up on the search business, from what the company is saying, just on the search engine technology. And to show that these aren’t just words, it keeps on unveiling new features and improvements for its search properties. It has now introduced a couple of new features that may prove interesting for its Image and Video search. The homepages of the respective search engines now feature a list of trending images, or videos, showcasing the hottest ones of the moment.
“Wondering what kinds of pictures and videos people are checking out right now? We’ve redesigned the Yahoo! Image and Video search home pages for a visual snapshot of the most popular trending topics that people are looking for in Yahoo! Search. With both video and image search, we are featuring up to five pages of topics that are trending in search. You can scroll through the pages or turn on autoscroll to watch the search trends of the moment,” Anuj Sahai and Sriram Satish at Yahoo Image Search announced.
To check out the new feature, you can visit the main Yahoo Image Search or Video Search pages. Both now sport the trending searches for their category, front and center. The searches go five pages deep, each with 18 queries. You can navigate to any of the five pages, or just leave the ‘autoscroll’ option on.
Interestingly, Yahoo says the feature is already paying off and people are spending more time on the search homepage. That was to be expected of course, any content on a page that would normally be used just to type in a query is going to generate more engagement. Still, a 60-percent increase in time spent on the Image Search homepage, which Yahoo says it is seeing, is a pretty big improvement. It just remains to be seen if users will actually find the new feature useful and worthwhile.