Yahoo! and Microsoft agreement to improve the Web search experience for users and advertisers had flagged the news sites in July . Microsoft promised to power Yahoo! search while Yahoo! became the exclusive worldwide relationship sales force for both companies’ premium search advertisers. So at that time, many of us may have thought that loosing to the vast user base of Google , Yahoo was trying to fire back using Microsoft’s shoulder. But my friends Yahoo still cares about search as this is what it revealed  in  its  blog  yesterday .

Yahoo is all geared up with its new search advertising enhancements that it categorises under the four categories of  innovation, transparency and control, value, and consumer relevance. David Pann, Yahoo! vice-president and general manager of search marketing revealed the augmentations to the readers which may be listed as follows:

1) Rich Ads in Search that can help improve click-through rate by as much as 25% will be manageable directly from the Sponsored Search interface and APIs.

2) Enhancements to BOSS search program will let third-party developers syndicate Yahoo! search on their sites and earn a share of the revenue from it.

3) The Ad Delivery Report, to keep you updated where your ads are showing on Yahoo’s various partner sites and how their traffic is performing for you.

4) Yahoo! Search Marketing Desktop tool, that will allow advertisers to manage their search campaigns offline. The beta program is also available.

5) As an enhancement to their search ad technology Yahoo has also added new search results page and would also use previous queries to better refine the ads displayed to searchers.

David Pann concluded saying that yahoo’s new marketing campaign was designed putting the consumer at the center of everything Yahoo! does and they we’re investing heavily in the consumer experience.” Our success is tied to attracting more engaged consumers who, in turn, search more frequently. And that’s good news for you.”

Microsoft and Yahoo! partnership did pave way for an accelerated as well sustained pace and breadth of innovation but still Yahoo! surpassing the Google ascendancy in the search industry will not be an easy chore.  Even when we view various statistics Google still will be seen to hold an upper hand with great margin. A snapshot for an evidence from Hitwise:

We hope Yahoo’s effort of delivering a series of search marketing enhancements that would give value to consumers and advertisers alike pushes it a step forward in the search marketing and its investments pay back the same amount.