American Internet major Yahoo! Inc. has entered a partnership with San Francisco-based online business review website Yelp Inc. Yahoo's alliance with Yelp is aimed at enhancing its local search result capabilities, tech news portal Tech Times said in a report.
According to the report, Yahoo chief executive Marissa Mayer on Friday announced its partnership with Yelp at an employee meeting. Tech Times, citing a Wall Street Journal source, said that the cooperation will incorporate Yelp's listings and local business reviews into Yahoo's results page.
The Wall Street Journal said that the source did not disclose the new feature's implementation timeline. The source however said that it will be up and running in the next few weeks, the report stated.
A partnership with Yelp will enable Yahoo to make itself distinct from partner and Microsoft Corp. web search engine Bing. This will also place Yahoo in a position to challenge Internet search giant Google Inc., Tech Times said.
Search ads are a major contributor to Yahoo's revenue. Search ads represented more than one third of Yahoo's earnings for the fourth quarter of fiscal year 2013. Revenue from search ads leaped 8% to $461 million during the quarter, the report said.
Yahoo currently holds about 10.8% of the entire Internet search market. Google emerged as the leader in search engine websites, lording over the largest chunk of the market share with 67.3% and followed by Microsoft, which controlled 18.2%, Tech Times said.
Yahoo appears to be making an effort to improve its search capabilities as well as develop user experience. Mayer last year promoted Laurie Mann, a senior vice president at Yahoo, to lead a group charged with developing search technology for the Internet corporation. Mayer herself previously headed rival Google's search division and was at the center of an undertaking to buyout Yelp for around $500 million in 2009, the report said.
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