By Aman Gupta
Publication Date: 2026-01-28 05:12:00
Yahoo is officially entering the AI search war with its new AI-powered “answer engine” called Yahoo Scout. The new AI tool is designed to compete directly with the likes of Google’s AI Mode, Perplexity, and ChatGPT’s real-time search feature.
What is Yahoo Scout?
Yahoo said on Tuesday that Scout leverages the company’s unique data and user insights, along with over 30 years of history in search, to shift search results from links to answers and search terms to natural language queries.
The AI-powered search synthesises information from the open web, Yahoo’s own content, and user data to deliver “clear, concise responses.” The company claims that its new engine is informed by 500 million user profiles and a knowledge graph spanning over one billion entities.
Scout can leverage the capabilities of Yahoo-owned and operated properties to help users with tasks like understanding upcoming weather patterns before a vacation, getting details about an important game, tracking stock price movements after earnings, comparing products before buying, or fact-checking a news story.
Jim Lanzone, CEO of Yahoo, while talking about the new feature in a release, said, “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.”
“This beta launch is just the starting point. From search to our industry-leading verticals,…
