Yahoo Scout is an AI ‘answer engine’ that wants to challenge Perplexity and Google’s AI mode

Yahoo is officially back in the search conversation, with Yahoo Scout, a new AI-powered answer engine that wants to take on Google’s AI mode and Perplexity by doing something surprisingly old-school. Instead of hiding links behind buttons or footnotes, Scout puts them front and center and makes clicking links part of the experience.

Yahoo Scout enters the AI search race with a different playbook

Scout is being pitched as an “answer engine,” not an AI chatbot. Ask it a question, and you get a clear, conversational response, but one that is loaded with visible blue links. Up to nine sources can appear for a single query, along with a full list of where the information came from.

Yahoo says this is deliberate. While rivals focus on smooth summaries, Scout is designed to keep the web visible rather than replacing it, a move that directly addresses publisher concerns around Google’s AI search quietly siphoning traffic.

Yahoo Scout is rolling out in beta starting today for U.S. users, available on scout.yahoo.com as well as inside the Yahoo Search app on iOS and Android.

Yahoo Scout is betting links still matter in AI search

Under the hood, Scout runs on Anthropic’s Claude model, combined with Yahoo’s own data, tone, and massive content library. That includes Yahoo News, Finance, Sports, and other verticals, along with web results powered by Microsoft Bing.

The result feels familiar if you…