When I met with Yahoo earlier this week to hear about it I received the now familiar speech that Yahoo is still very much in search and continuing to “innovate” around the UI and UX. There have been some interesting efforts along those lines on the PC in the past (Yahoo Search Direct), but Axis actually is genuinely different and noteworthy.

Three screen experience

Axis is available for all three screens: PC (as a browser plug-in), the iPad and the iPhone (as apps). Android is coming.

Axis is a fully functional browser that syncs content across all screens if users are signed in. Like other browsers Axis features tabs and book marks and can render any web page.

On the PC it functions more as a “companion” search bar at the bottom of the page on each of the major browsers: IE, Chrome and Firefox. Below is an example of how it looks on Chrome in the context of a search for “Hawaiian vacations.” I’ve got the standard Google results and then Axis results horizontally across the bottom of the screen:

It doesn’t automatically insert or mirror the query you’ve done on Google or Bing or launch the module you see above. You have to manually enter the query at the bottom of the page. Then it offers a visual preview (live pages) of the top ranked sites. The ranking of these sites is somewhat different than conventional Yahoo search results. Clicks and time on the underlying sites are factored into the ranking of these Axis results.

Users can then horizontally scroll through results rather than clicking back and forth on links. These images run for the equivalent of the first two pages of search results and then you get text and descriptions. However Yahoo suggested that most people aren’t going to go beyond a page or two of results anyway. My sense is that people will horizontally scroll for “longer” than vertically.

While this PC experience is useful and provides a kind of secondary or back-up search capability, Axis is ultimately about delivering a better, mobile-optimized search experience that completely eliminates the “10 blue links.”

Getting rid of blue links

Yahoo special products director Ethan Batraski said that Yahoo was trying to get rid of the interim “second page” of search results (the list of links) and go right from the query to the web results in “one step.”

There have been other PC search engines and mobile apps to present visual results rather than links, most recently in mobile by Do@ (now Everything.me). All of those essentially failed. But Yahoo has the advantage of scale and greater visibility than any of the visual search startups that came before.

Whenever you’re on a specific website, you can pull down the page and see the horizontal bar of search results. It’s always there in the background. Touching another image loads that page but the search results remain in the background and accessible until you do a new query. You’re not hitting the back button to return to search results.

This functionality works relatively well on the iPhone (especially image search) but it really is best shown on tablets (iPad only for the moment). The larger screen enables the visual nature of Axis to shine.

There’s also a personalized home page with bookmarks and saved articles that carries across screens when signed in. Users can sign in with Yahoo, Google or Facebook log-in credentials to access the capability.

About the “Axis” name

I asked Yahoo about the name “Axis,” which I said reminded me of World War II. They responded that they went through many names and there are “negative connotations” to others as well, including Chrome and Safari (though not many readily come to mind). Another interesting element here is the black aesthetic.

Yahoo has done market testing and sees an opening with young, affluent early adopter males. (Perhaps the “Spike TV” crowd.) Jokes aside, the company is seeking to cultivate new audiences with Axis and the edgier image is part of that effort. It struck me a bit like a sports team adopting tougher-looking uniforms and colors.

Yahoo went to some length with me and in the press materials to underscore that there’s innovative technology on the back end behind Axis:

Axis is built upon the Yahoo! Cocktails mobile development platform, which is designed for creating deeply personalized products that are built for connected devices first. Comprised of Mojito, an open source JavaScript MVC framework and Manhattan, a cloud-based hosted environment, Cocktails is a blend of open, standard web technologies including HTML5, CSS3, JavaScript and Node.JS.

Differentiated but will it “move the needle”?

Doing my best Walt Mossberg, I can say that after using it for several days on both the iPhone and iPad, and to a lesser degree, on the PC I think Yahoo has created a useful and differentiated mobile search experience. The syncing and multi-screen capability are also useful, although not unique.

Search Direct is the mother/father of this experience. And if it “takes” we may see traditional Yahoo search on the PC incorporate some or many of these UI/UX features and elements. That very much remains to be seen and is contingent on the success of Axis.

There will inevitably be questions like, “Will it move the needle for Yahoo?”

I don’t know. It depends on how aggressively Yahoo promotes Axis, how many people try it out and how many continue to use it. However I don’t think we’ll see any dramatic change in user behavior in the near term. But it does put some additional UI pressure on Google in mobile search, which just released a new version of its iPhone app today.

There are no ads for now. But one can easily imagine display ads showing up among the visual search results in the not too distant future. Yahoo wants to build an audience before it starts inserting ads, however.

Because Axis is quite distinct from the traditional PC and mobile search experience some will like it but some may find it too foreign. However I would encourage you to try it. It’s definitely worth a test drive.

See also related coverage from around the web on this topic from Techmeme.

One of those new ideas is a feature that would let Yahoo users begin a search on one device — a desktop computer, for example — and continue to use/interact with the search on a different device, like a tablet or laptop computer.

In an interview with MediaPost, Shashi Seth, Yahoo’s Senior VP of Search and Marketplaces, explains this search-across-devices idea. Here’s how MediaPost describes it:

Yahoo has begun to test the ability to start a query on one device and continue it on another. For example, searching for a local restaurant on a desktop PC, finding a location and saving the search to continue it on a mobile device, such as iPad or smartphone.

Signing into a Yahoo ID account allows the engine to connect searches on smartphones to tablets, desktops and laptops. Searchers will not only benefit from being able to save queries and continue them on another device, but advertisers will have an option to target ads across devices. Seth said Yahoo could release the tool within the next few months.

How innovative and useful this is will obviously lie in the details. You could argue that something like Google’s saved search history already allows you to search on one device and then resume/continue the search on another device. But I suspect Yahoo has something different in mind than that sort of blunt instrument approach that only involves saving and repeating a search on different devices.

Seth hinted at this search across devices idea in a Yahoo blog post in January, too, saying that “search engines must act as a companion across all devices, not just a destination experience.”

Prior to tonight’s new display, a search for “apple recipes” would include the standard algorithmic results (i.e., 10 blue links) along with a small shortcut at the top of the search results pointing searchers to recipes on shine.yahoo.com, Yahoo’s lifestyle content site for women.

Now, the Yahoo.com search results offer a much richer experience.

The new content includes (1) a slider with top-rated recipes from AllRecipes.com and other sources; (2) a Filter by Ingredient option; (3) the obligatory Facebook sharing tool; (4) new tabs to filter search results based on their calorie count and preparation time; (5) a new “Recipes” tab under the search box that leads to the new Yahoo Recipe Search interface, which offers additional search and filtering options like “meal type,” “occasion” and “rating.” (There’s also a new, dedicated URL for Yahoo Recipe Search at recipes.search.yahoo.com.)

Yahoo has made similar changes for shopping-related searches. There’s already been a dedicated “Shopping” tab at the top of the search results, but the shopping experience is richer and similar to what’s being offered for recipes. Rather than just showing five or 10 products and a link into Yahoo Shopping, Yahoo shows a slider and new “Deals” and “Buying Guide” tabs.

There’s a comparison tool that lets searchers check out up to five items from within the search results page, and filtering options as shown above in the screenshot.

Lastly, and not holiday-related — Yahoo has also tweaked its search results for entertainment queries. Tabs for “Videos” and “Tweets” are still available, but the interface has been changed and looks more like the tabs seen above on recipe and shopping searches.

The new Yahoo search experiences should be available now on Yahoo.com.

The new desktop beta offers a stream-like display of local news, deals, events, and other content that comes from Yahoo editors, local websites and blogs, and community members contributing directly to Yahoo Local. A lot of that content is new to Yahoo Local; some of it expands on Yahoo’s recent focus on Deals-based content and some is made possible by the company’s push into hyperlocal content in recent months, as well as its purchase of Associated Content earlier this year. (If adoption picks up, the new Yahoo Local could become a hyperlocal blog/content network to be reckoned with.)

As Greg pointed out in his article, the local search box is gone and there’s not even a map showing (but there is a “maps & directions” link in the right column).

You can see all this on the beta page (desktop version) for San Francisco, or one of the other cities and neighborhoods where the beta is available. If you live in one of those 30 or so towns, you can access the beta at http://beta.local.yahoo.com.

The New Yahoo Local On Mobile

What’s new to today’s announcements is the availability of the Yahoo Local beta where it will really be most important: on mobile devices. After choosing your neighborhood, Yahoo presents a mix of hyperlocal news, events, and offers.

It’s an interesting mix of content. I’m seeing movie listings, Groupon offers (not shown above but further down the screen), videos from Turn Here, events from Yahoo’s Upcoming.org property, and articles from hyperlocal blogs.

But, as Greg pointed out in his article a couple weeks ago about the desktop version, it’s not very useful as a tool for finding local businesses — and that’s one of the primary mobile use cases. For now, and specifically for me as an iPhone user, that task is better handled by Yahoo’s traditional mobile app.

The new Yahoo Local is in beta for now, so I’ll be curious to see if local business search/discovery gets added as Yahoo continues to refine the product.

Postscript, December 9: In regard to my question in the paragraph above, it seems unlikely that local business search will be added to the new Yahoo Local. Through its PR reps, Yahoo has clarified that Yahoo Local is about “local discovery” instead of “local search,” and asked that we correct the mention in the first paragraph of a “local search interface.”

Yahoo says it’s “pulling more essential information from the web, and employing the latest HTML5 technology to help you easily browse the content you’re interested in.”

A search for Brett Favre, for example, shows how the search results have expanded.

(three screenshots from scrolling down the search results)

There’s a lot of information being returned here:

• profile information with current stats
• news results
• web results
• Twitter results
• more web results
• links to Image, Local, and News search results
• related searches (“Also Try”)
• ads (one at the top, two at the bottom)

I counted 27 results, not including the links to ads, related searches and other search types.

Yahoo says the search result enhancements are available now at http://m.yahoo.com for most iPhone users in the U.S. and some newer versions of Android 2.x phones. It’s also available via the Yahoo Search for Android widget. Yahoo says more devices and countries will get the new mobile search experience in future months.

Some of the informal comments and conversations that immediately followed the 90-minute discussion were along the lines of “We’ve heard this before, what’s new?” or “Where’s the vision?”

During the Q&A portion of the session Irving stumbled a bit when asked by the BBC’s Maggie Shields to sum up what Yahoo was in a sentence. He rattled off a list of things.

Indeed, Irving had said during his opening, “People have seen Yahoo as disassociated set of verticals. Going forward there’s going to be ‘one Yahoo.’ You’re going to see us transition to an on network and off network player — something that you take with you and not as much as a place where you go.”

This sort of thing has been said before (remember YOS?).

During his opening remarks Irving laid out some elements (literally as a periodic table) of Yahoo’s “new” strategy:

• Building an ecosystem outside the Yahoo network: both ads and content. Irving suggests that Yahoo might create a “content exchange” like the RightMedia ads exchange. There will also be a focus on third party sites
• Personal relevance through data. Irving says 50% of Yahoo’s 600 million log in. “We are going to be striving for 100% authentication over the next three years.” (By honoring OpenID and not just Yahoo IDs.)
• Be where the consumer is (mobile and tablets will be equally important)
• Social: own real social relationships on the web. He implies that Yahoo’s social strategy involves smaller groups than large public networks
• Best in class services: Irving asserts that this is Yahoo’s challenge/task across devices

Beyond these principles, Irving previewed a few specifics: a rebuilt Yahoo Mail with speed and design improvements, some search UI changes that would be more visually pleasing and enable users to “act” on search results more than today. Irving said, “We’re going to bring you as close to that ‘answer’ as possible” (including conducting transactions from the search results page).

There was also a brief visual tease of a forthcoming iPad app for Yahoo that looked pretty nicely designed.

After Irving, CTO Raymie Stata got up and talked about bringing a “search mindset” to the whole of Yahoo and infusing everything being done with “big science” to generate “awesome experiences.” He went on to discuss Yahoo’s architecture and infrastructure, saying that many changes had been made to lay the groundwork for a “faster, more iterative” approach to product development going forward (to use Irving’s words).

Though both men were passionate and articulate the discussion felt a bit like a meal without the entree. But then I went into the hall, which not everyone did, and saw some of the product demos and talked to some of the product people about specifics. After those conversations my perception of things changed considerably.

Reporters who wrote their stories “in the room” without the benefit of seeing the demos only heard what sounded like a familiar aspirational speech. But if you actually saw some of the product specifics it put some interesting “meat on the bones” of Irving and Stata’s general remarks.

Asked to discuss my reactions immediately following the press conference, I told the BBC that Yahoo has “strong products and strong content but they don’t have . . . . products that have gotten people excited.” I told the Wall Street Journal that “They need to show up with sexy, exciting stuff to regain some of their old credibility.” These were my immediate, quick reactions to the general and short-on-specifics speeches. But I felt differently after speaking to the product people.

Out in the hall I saw:

• A new version of Yahoo Messenger than includes a “Face Time” like PC-to-smartphone video chat capability
• A better looking and seemingly faster Yahoo Mail
• A very well-designed version of Yahoo for the iPad (nothing like the browser version) that was visually rich and capable of customization
• Some impressive new rich media ad units
• A much improved version of Yahoo Groups that was visually more pleasing and seemingly more useful
• A partly new search interface with some intriguing possibilities, including the presentation of rich display ads in the “accordion” module at the top of results:

Yahoo Search SVP Shashi Seth told me that this accordion module, which allows users to quickly browse through information, was testing very well and would be coming this fall. Whether you like it or not personally it’s the kind of thing that Yahoo has said it was going to do in the post-Bing era: innovate on top of the Microsoft index.

I came away from these and a couple of other discussions thinking (in contrast to my immediate remarks) maybe Yahoo doesn’t need a single big vision. Maybe that’s not possible given Yahoo’s legacy. Instead, maybe it just needs to do what it does already but do it better and update it more frequently. In other words make its products better and easier to use and bring out improvements more rapidly. (There are some who might argue it has lost some of the engineering talent required to do so.)

Yet this is precisely what Blake Irving said that Yahoo would do now: “iterate more rapidly.” In a sense Yahoo doesn’t need lots of flashy new stuff so much as it needs to stop neglecting some of the assets it already owns. That was acknowledged to me several times in my demo-related conversations. Yahoo Groups is a case-in-point.

Yahoo says it has 10 million groups, with a total of 115 million users globally. By comparison, MySpace officially claims just over 120 million users globally (though “active” users may be fewer). Groups was a social network of sorts before there were social networks.

Yahoo has in the past tried to turn Mail into a social network but Yahoo Groups is already a version of what Google has been considering around smaller sets of connections; it has just been long neglected. A better designed and more functional Yahoo Groups, which is what I saw, could represent a major avenue into “social networking” and it’s already there.

I’m not entirely reversing myself here. I do think that new and exciting products would help Yahoo. But I also believe that if Yahoo can do a better job of developing what it already has it can not only retain but grow usage and regain some of its lost “mojo” — whatever that is exactly.

It’s all described in this Yahoo blog post, complete with screenshots showing how users can begin their search by using a “handwriting panel” next to the search button.

Yahoo says that’s the Chinese language character for the first letter of Lady Gaga’s name. To the left of what the user has drawn, Yahoo shows six possible character matches. And once the searcher indicates which character s/he drew, Yahoo then shows 10 suggested searches.

Yahoo says this feature should make it easier for searchers who typically type their queries in Chinese, but the feature also accepts handwritten queries in English. Here are the results of me using the writing panel with the letter “s.”

You’ll need the latest version of Adobe’s Flash Player for this writing panel to work. Yahoo says the technology supports Traditional Chinese, Simplified Chinese, English, and numbers.

Users can add Yahoo search to the home screen (as an Android Widget). It’s also voice-enabled.

It’s not clear to me whether that voice search capability is provided by partner Vlingo (in which Yahoo is an investor) or whether it uses Google’s voice recognition baked into the OS itself. It would be highly ironic if Yahoo search on Android were powered by Google voice recognition.

If you’d like to download any of these apps you can scan the barcodes below (or go into the Android Market).

In general Yahoo’s mobile search experience is very good and Yahoo has the opportunity to make gains if it can truly “innovate around the UI and UX” as the company has promised.

It will be interesting to see later what sort of usage Yahoo gets with Search on Android. Most Android devices, with a couple of narrow exceptions, are wedded to Google search. I would imagine however that there are many Android buyers who use Yahoo Mail and Messenger.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Postscript: Not being an Android power user I was confused about how to install Yahoo Search. It appeared to be an app that wouldn’t launch on my EVO. In fact, after speaking to Yahoo, I found out it’s a “widget” that you install on your homescreen.

You download the “app” from the Android Market and then touch and hold the homescreen. Then select Yahoo Search from the widget menu (all the apps/widgets appear as a list) — and viola; it’s on the homescreen.

Voice search is enabled by Google voice recognition technology on the device, but otherwise it’s all Yahoo. The Android Yahoo Search interface is very much like its iPhone UI. And in many respects it’s more “mobile-friendly” and pleasing — although that’s a matter of taste — than Google’s mobile UI.

The new feature acts similarly to what Yahoo’s done in the other verticals. Now, when using Yahoo Video Search to find TV shows, searchers will get a series of refinements in the left-side column that offer deeper searches for specific characters, popular episodes, and seasons. Here’s the screenshot of a search for How I Met Your Mother:

The second refiner deals with searches for popular film actors. The video results page will now show links to clips from an actor’s popular movies, like this search for Tom Hanks:

Yahoo calls these search “refiners” but their real strength is in organizing the available content into logical, user-friendly subsets.

Perhaps the main innovation here is the inclusion of content and information right inside the Search Assist dropdown. For example, do a search for a company’s stock symbol, and Yahoo will show real-time stock prices and a couple related links before you even execute the search.

Yahoo says similar features are available for queries related to sports, travel, and movies.

Search Assist can now also help users reach other Yahoo properties more quickly. For certain queries, Yahoo will show quick links to Yahoo News or Yahoo Images. For other queries, Yahoo will show deep links to other Yahoo properties, like Flickr or Yahoo Mail. Type “mail” while you’re viewing Yahoo Sports, for example, and you’ll get quick links to send an email, visit your in box, or create a new email address.

The new features aren’t available yet in the main search box on Yahoo.com, but are accessible in the search box of nearly all other Yahoo properties.