Yahoo Scout: an AI search engine to rival ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Google | The VergeSkip to main contentThe homepageThe VergeThe Verge logo.The VergeThe Verge logo.TechReviewsScienceEntertainmentAIPolicyHamburger Navigation ButtonThe homepageThe VergeThe Verge logo.Hamburger Navigation ButtonNavigation DrawerThe VergeThe Verge logo.Login / Sign UpcloseCloseSearchTechExpandAmazonAppleFacebookGoogleMicrosoftSamsungBusinessSee all techGadgetsExpandLaptopsPhonesTVsHeadphonesSpeakersWearablesSee all gadgetsReviewsExpandSmart Home ReviewsPhone ReviewsTablet ReviewsHeadphone ReviewsSee all reviewsAIExpandOpenAIAnthropicSee all AIVerge ShoppingExpandBuying GuidesDealsGift GuidesSee all shoppingPolicyExpandAntitrustPoliticsLawSecuritySee all policyScienceExpandSpaceEnergyEnvironmentHealthSee all scienceEntertainmentExpandTV ShowsMoviesAudioSee all entertainmentGamingExpandXboxPlayStationNintendoSee all gamingStreamingExpandDisneyHBONetflixYouTubeCreatorsSee all streamingTransportationExpandElectric CarsAutonomous CarsRide-sharingScootersSee all transportationFeaturesVerge VideoExpandTikTokYouTubeInstagramPodcastsExpandDecoderThe VergecastVersion HistoryNewslettersExpandThe Verge DailyInstallerVerge DealsNotepadOptimizerRegulatorThe StepbackArchivesStoreSubscribeFacebookThreadsInstagramYoutubeRSSThe VergeThe Verge logo.Yahoo Scout looks like a more web-friendly take on AI searchComments DrawerCommentsLoading commentsGetting the conversation ready...AICloseAIPosts from this topic will be added to your daily email digest and your homepage feed.FollowFollowSee All AITechCloseTechPosts from this topic will be added to your daily email digest and your homepage feed.FollowFollowSee All TechAppsCloseAppsPosts from this topic will be added to your daily email digest and your homepage feed.FollowFollowSee All AppsYahoo Scout looks like a more web-friendly take on AI searchIt’s somewhere between 10 blue links and a full-blown AI assistant, and so far, it feels like the right mix.It’s somewhere between 10 blue links and a full-blown AI assistant, and so far, it feels like the right mix.by David PierceCloseDavid PierceEditor-at-LargePosts from this author will be added to your daily email digest and your homepage feed.FollowFollowSee All by David PierceJan 27, 2026, 3:00 PM UTCLinkShareGiftImage: YahooDavid PierceCloseDavid PiercePosts from this author will be added to your daily email digest and your homepage feed.FollowFollowSee All by David Pierce is editor-at-large and Vergecast co-host with over a decade of experience covering consumer tech. Previously, at Protocol, The Wall Street Journal, and Wired.Yahoo’s big AI play is, in many ways, actually a return to the company’s roots. Three decades ago, Yahoo was known as “Jerry’s guide to the world wide web,” and was designed as a sort of all-encompassing portal to help people find good stuff on an increasingly large, hard-to-parse internet. In the early aughts, the rise of web search more or less obviated that whole idea. But now, Yahoo thinks, we’ve come back around.With a new product called Scout, Yahoo is trying to return to being that kind of guide to the web — only this time, with a whole bunch of AI in the mix. Scout, in its early form, is a search portal that will immediately be familiar if you’ve ever used Perplexity or clicked over to Google’s AI Mode. It shows a text box and some suggested queries. You type a question; it delivers an answer. Right now Scout is a tab in Yahoo’s search engine (which, CEO Jim Lanzone likes to remind me every time we talk, is somehow still the third-most-popular search engine in the US), a standalone web app, and a central feature in the new Yahoo Search mobile app. Yahoo calls it an “answer engine,” but it’s AI web search. You get it. And so far, it’s the most search-y of any similar product I’ve tried. I like it a lot.Scout has two jobs, really. The first is just to be a guide, to find stuff on the web. “It’s moved from ‘how do I find things on the internet’ to weeding through clickbait and now AI slop,” says Eric Feng, who runs Yahoo’s research group and has been leading the Scout project. But Scout’s job is also to bring AI summaries and smarts to all of Yahoo’s other products, and to help Yahoo users pull all that disparate data into one place.In a funny twist, Yahoo may be perfectly positioned to do this well. Because Yahoo runs huge content verticals like Sports and Finance, with a big newsroom of its own and partnerships with many other publishers, it has a huge amount of high-quality reference material for Scout. It also has Yahoo Weather and Yahoo Mail and Yahoo Horoscopes and Yahoo Shopping and Yahoo So Many Other Things Besides. Yahoo is a full-fledged content machine, and it can just point an LLM at all that content. “We’re the only ones who can take our user data, our usage data, our content, our relationships and information, and combine that with everything we know about search into an AI answer engine,” Lanzone says.Scout is pretty quickly going to be the centerpiece of Yahoo Search. Image: YahooGoogle would probably take issue with that statement. It has many of Yahoo’s same advantages, and a bunch of other ones, and a lot more users. But Yahoo has one key win over Google: It doesn’t have a massive, indomitable search-ads business to protect. Because of the sheer scale of both its user base and its revenue, Google has to slow-play its way into making AI Mode the face of Google Search, even though that’s obviously the plan. Yahoo has no such qualms: Lanzone says Scout won’t replace standard Yahoo Search from day one, but makes it pretty clear that that’s the plan before long.There is still a business plan here, though. Scout is launching with affiliate links for shopping results and an ad unit at the bottom of some searches. All the AI search products seem to be deciding that ads are the way to monetize AI, and Yahoo is set up to get there quickly. The goal, Lanzone says, is to use ads to keep Scout free for everyone. “Maybe one day we’ll also have a paid tier,” he adds, “but free search is extremely important.”One thing Yahoo isn’t doing? Building its own foundation model. For one thing, Lanzone says, doing that is very expensive. “We think we can best serve our users not so much with the model,” he says, “but with the grounding data and the personalization data that we can add on top of other people’s models.” Scout is based on Anthropic’s Claude model, and what Feng describes as “Yahoo content, Yahoo data, Yahoo personality.” Much of the web-search data comes from a partnership with Microsoft and Bing, as it has for many years.Scout suggests stuff to ask, but also functions like a normal search box. Image: YahooEverybody doing AI search swears they care deeply about the future of the open web, but in my testing so far, Scout is the most web-forward AI search product yet. When I asked Scout, “What’s the latest on this winter storm?” it responded with a one-paragraph summary that included three links prominently highlighted in blue. After that, I got three sections of more details about what’s happening in my Virginia town, the forecast to come, and then a “Latest News” section with links to Yahoo stories, Yahoo partner stories, and other links around the web. In total, the page had nine links, plus a way to see all the page’s sources at once.When I did the same search on ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Google AI Mode, I got similar summaries, structured in similar ways. ChatGPT was the only one to link more prominently: It stuck a carousel of news links right at the top of the page. Other than that, all three platforms seem to hide links behind icons or light-colored buttons — only Scout seems to actually want you to click the links. Making sure people actually do click them will be crucial to the rest of Yahoo’s business, and to keeping its newsroom and publisher partners on board with Scout’s existence.In my early tests of Scout, it feels much more like a search engine than an AI companion. Its tone is very straightforward, and it doesn’t present like a friend to talk to. It’s just a way to find information on the internet, organized conversationally rather than as a bunch of links. That doesn’t sound particularly novel, but in a sea of AI tools that would love to pretend the internet doesn’t exist at all, it’s a refreshingly useful take on the genre. I don’t think I’ve used Yahoo Search on purpose in a decade, but when I wanted to know when the Winter Olympics started, Scout gave me a better answer than any other search engine I tested. That’s not enough to take on Google, but it’s a decent start.Follow topics and authors from this story to see more like this in your personalized homepage feed and to receive email updates.David PierceCloseDavid PierceEditor-at-LargePosts from this author will be added to your daily email digest and your homepage feed.FollowFollowSee All by David PierceAICloseAIPosts from this topic will be added to your daily email digest and your homepage feed.FollowFollowSee All AIAppsCloseAppsPosts from this topic will be added to your daily email digest and your homepage feed.FollowFollowSee All AppsTechCloseTechPosts from this topic will be added to your daily email digest and your homepage feed.FollowFollowSee All TechWebCloseWebPosts from this topic will be added to your daily email digest and your homepage feed.FollowFollowSee All WebMost PopularMost PopularTikTok USA is brokenPayment processors were against CSAM until Grok started making itEven the big dick subreddit is mad about ICETikTokers are heading to UpScrolled following US takeoverIntel Panther Lake laptop CPU review: call it a comebackThe Verge DailyA free daily digest of the news that matters most.Email (required)Sign UpBy submitting your email, you agree to our Terms and Privacy Notice. 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Yahoo’s Scout: A Novel Approach to AI-Powered Search
Yahoo is attempting a significant return to its roots with Scout, a new AI search engine designed to be a more intuitive and helpful guide to the web. This product represents a deliberate shift away from the purely algorithmic approach favored by competitors like Google, leaning instead into a model that prioritizes contextual understanding and a more human-like interaction. The core idea, as articulated by Yahoo’s research group lead Eric Feng and CEO Jim Lanzone, is to move beyond simply finding links to information, and instead to provide summarized answers and proactively guide the user through a complex web.

Scout’s design is intentionally multi-faceted, functioning as a tab within Yahoo Search, a standalone web app, and a central component of the new Yahoo Search mobile app. This approach aims to integrate seamlessly into the user’s existing workflow. Crucially, the platform leverages Yahoo’s vast content ecosystem – including Yahoo Sports, Yahoo Finance, Yahoo Weather, Yahoo Mail, and Yahoo Horoscopes – as a rich source of data for the AI to draw upon. This abundance of information is then combined with insights from partnerships with Microsoft and Bing, offering a particularly robust foundation for the AI’s responses.

The strategy centers around integrating AI summaries and smarts across all of Yahoo’s products. Unlike some AI search engines that focus solely on delivering answers, Scout’s goal is to facilitate a more comprehensive user experience by connecting disparate data sources. The system is built on Anthropic’s Claude model, augmented by Yahoo’s own content, data, and personalization features — a deliberate move designed to differentiate it from relying solely on external models.

In its early stages, Scout presents itself as a straightforward search engine, prioritizing clarity and usefulness over flashy features. Editor-at-Large David Pierce notes that this is a refreshingly welcome approach given the proliferation of AI tools attempting to mimic human conversation, and that it largely functions as a guided search experience – presenting information in a readily digestible format. Unlike some competitors, Scout prominently displays links in a conversational manner, encouraging users to explore further. This makes it particularly effective at directing users toward the most relevant information within Yahoo’s vast content network, and beyond.

The design also incorporates elements of personalization, drawing on Yahoo’s extensive user data to tailor responses and recommendations. Importantly, Yahoo is not attempting to build its own foundational AI model from scratch. This approach recognizes the significant cost and complexity involved, instead opting to leverage existing models like Claude, combined with its own data and insights. This strategy ensures that Scout remains competitive while focusing resources on refining its core functionality.

The monetization strategy for Scout is also noteworthy. Yahoo intends to generate revenue through affiliate links within its search results and through advertising – a move aligned with the broader trend in the AI search market. However, Lanzone emphasizes that free search remains a core priority, hoping to sustain the platform through advertising while also exploring potential premium tiers in the future.

Ultimately, Yahoo’s Scout represents a calculated bet. It’s a deliberate attempt to carve out a unique position in the competitive AI search landscape, leveraging Yahoo’s existing strengths and recognizing the evolving needs of users. Its early success hinges on reliably delivering helpful, contextualized answers, while effectively guiding users toward Yahoo’s considerable content network.