Praveena Sharma

Bangalore: With the launch of Yahoo’s latest search concept called Glue Page, the company is targeting to create better monetisation opportunities for its India operations besides making the search engine more efficient.

The internet company has chosen India for beta testing Glue Pages. A query on the new Glue Pages of Yahoo India throws up visual and textual contents side by side against the staid classic algorithmic search results provided by other search-related services. It automatically creates a page on the term (subject) a user is searching.

“We have decided to test the concept in India because a unique thing is going in India as internet market expands here. Also, India leads the market in terms of content on internet, so there is strong relevance here,” said Gopal Krishna, head of audience, Yahoo India.

Yahoo has currently confined search terms on the Glue Page to select categories such as health, sports, entertainment, travel, technology and finance after studying the user behaviour. For this, it has created a core team comprising around 100 experts to develop pages on these terms.The company, till now, has created 500 pages on various terms. These are being beta tested in India.

After the beta test is successfully completed, which may run into three months or over two years, Yahoo will roll out the service in markets outside India.

“With it (Glue Page), we have new opportunities for monetisation as we look for advertisements, sponsored modules and page sponsorship on it,” said Tapan Bhat, senior vice-president of Yahoo’s front door & network services.

Though Yahoo is believed to have got good a response from advertisers and sponsors for its new service, Pranesh Anthapur, CEO, research & development, Yahoo India, did not quantify revenue growth that Glue Page would spur.

“We will not be able give any number as yet,” he said.

Source : DNA