Yahoo Launches AI-Powered Search Engine ‘Scout’ to Take On Google AI Mode and Perplexity
Yahoo has officially entered the intensifying AI search race with the launch of Yahoo Scout, a new AI-powered search experience designed to deliver direct answers instead of traditional link-based results. The feature is currently available in beta for users in the United States.
With Scout, Yahoo aims to transform how users search online by shifting from keyword-driven queries to natural language questions, similar to emerging AI “answer engines” in the market.
What is Yahoo Scout?
Yahoo Scout is an AI-driven search tool that synthesizes information from the open web, Yahoo’s own content ecosystem, and anonymized user data to generate clear, concise responses. According to the company, Scout is powered by insights from over 500 million user profiles and a knowledge graph covering more than one billion entities.
The new search experience is positioned as a direct competitor to Google AI Mode, Perplexity, and ChatGPT’s real-time search capabilities.
How Yahoo Scout Works
Scout is built to answer questions rather than simply list web pages. It can assist users with a wide range of everyday tasks, including:
Checking weather conditions ahead of travel
Following live sports updates and game analysis
Tracking stock price movements after earnings
Comparing products before making a purchase
Fact-checking breaking news stories
By integrating Yahoo’s owned platforms such as news, finance, and sports, Scout aims to provide context-rich responses within a single interface.
Yahoo CEO on the AI Search Shift
Commenting on the launch, Yahoo CEO Jim Lanzone said that search is undergoing a fundamental transformation.
“Search is fundamentally changing, and our team has been inspired to use our decades of experience and extremely rare assets to create something uniquely useful for Yahoo’s hundreds of millions of monthly users,” Lanzone said.
He added that the beta release marks only the beginning, with plans to expand Scout across Yahoo’s major verticals to help users complete tasks faster and more efficiently.
Key Features of Yahoo Scout
AI Model and Partnerships:
Yahoo has partnered with Anthropic, using its Claude large language model as the primary foundation for Scout. To ensure accuracy and source reliability, Yahoo is also leveraging Microsoft’s Bing grounding API to reference authoritative web sources.
Shopping Experience:
Scout includes a new AI-powered shopping feature that summarizes expert reviews and comparison articles, allowing users to evaluate products and brands quickly without opening multiple tabs.
Yahoo Finance Integration:
The tool offers one-click access to real-time financial insights, including company news, analyst ratings, earnings calls, and stock data. Headlines and analysis are refreshed approximately every 10 minutes.
Who Can Use Yahoo Scout?
Yahoo Scout is currently available to users in the United States via Scout.Yahoo.com and through the Yahoo Search app on both iOS and Android. The company says the feature is accessible to nearly 250 million users in the US, with plans to expand availability, personalization, and functionality in the coming months.
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