With the pending search deal between Yahoo and Microsoft many have been wondering what exactly are Yahoo's plans for its search business. With the company's own CEO now claiming that Yahoo not only isn't a search company but it has never actually been one, the worries seemed justified. Yahoo knows this as well and decided to take a stand by reaffirming its involvement and interest in search with a list of upcoming search-related products for users and advertisers.

“With all of the events that Yahoo! has gone through in the last several months, one of the questions I get is: “Does Yahoo! still care about search?” The answer is: Absolutely. In fact, Yahoo! is delivering a series of enhancements that deliver value to consumers and advertisers alike,” David Pann, Yahoo VP and general manager of search marketing, said. “Our new search enhancements fall into four major areas: innovation, transparency and control, value, and consumer relevance.”

Yahoo boasts several new products that should make their way to the search engine in the short term future. For example the Rich Ads for search, which allow advertisers to add video and images to the search ads that previously only contained text. The company has been testing the ads with several big brand partners and says the initial results are very promising, but then again what else could it say. The program will be rolled out for more advertisers sometime later this month when they will be integrated into Yahoo's regular search ad offerings for large campaigns. This way advertisers will be able to bid for placement of the rich ads and buy them as part of a broader marketing campaign.

The company also plans to implement better tools to customize the ad campaigns for example enabling customers to differentiate between ads that show up on Yahoo.com itself and those on partner sites, allowing them to bid differently or even have different messages. Yahoo has also adjusted the pricing scheme “to better align what you pay with the value of the clicks you receive.” Of course, despite the boost of confidence, many of these features will be gone when the two giants actually merge their search businesses as all of the advertising will be powered by Microsoft's AdCenter platform.