Yahoo partners with Yelp to compete with Google

Yahoo will now use Yelp to deliver local business details to users searching for information about a specific city in an attempt to give Google a run for its money. The financial terms of the deal have not been announced, but news of the partnership first leaked last month. Yelp reviews, ratings and photos will start to appear on the right hand panel of the search engine. The listings will also appear within Yahoo maps, for for desktop, smartphone and tablet users in the U.S. Yahoo will look to provide users with a better search experience, one of the tasks current CEO Marissa Mayer listed as a high priority for the company. Mayer recently spoke about "contextual" search and how it cold provide Yahoo's users with more personalized content. Yahoo can then use the feedback they get from a user's interests and use it to sell better, targeted advertising. Yelp stands to benefit from increased traffic and could generate better revenues, as well as helping its brand stand out by having its data featured on Yahoo. Yahoo at present ranks third in the search ecosystem, behind Google and Microsoft's Bing. Yahoo's search market share started to slump after the company started relying on Microsoft technology to produce most of its search results. The partnership was intended to allow Yahoo to focus on providing other features for its search results. While ad revenues initially dropped, numbers have been on the upswing. Yahoo's search revenue last year rose 6 percent to $1.7 billion.