Yahoo has launched Yahoo Scout, an AI-powered answer engine designed to deliver conversational responses and direct answers to users’ questions. The tool is currently in beta and available across Yahoo’s products, including Yahoo Search, Mail, News, Finance, Sports, Shopping, and other core properties.

Scout is live in beta for U.S. users at Scout.Yahoo.com and within the Yahoo Search app on iOS and Android.

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What Yahoo Scout does

Scout draws information from multiple sources, including the open web, Yahoo’s proprietary data, and user insights, to provide concise answers, summaries, and AI-assisted insights for natural-language queries.

The engine uses Anthropic’s Claude large language model, Microsoft Bing’s grounding API, Yahoo’s knowledge graph, and other proprietary datasets. Responses may include media, structured lists, tables, and visible source links. The platform says every answer contains inline citations and links.

Scout’s interface features interactive digital elements, suggested searches filtered by topics such as news, finance, sports, shopping, and travel, as well as a history sidebar showing past queries. Product demos show that the answer engine includes visual design elements, such as colorful emojis in responses and an animated homepage.

Integration across Yahoo products

Scout is positioned as an AI “answer engine” rather than a search replacement, complementing Yahoo Mail, News, Finance, Sports, and Shopping. Features include AI summaries, financial insights, game breakdowns, product research guidance, and shoppable links.

Unlike AI engines such as OpenAI’s ChatGPT or Google’s AI Search, Scout emphasizes a web-forward approach with structured answers and visible citations, along with deeper integration into Yahoo’s portal ecosystem. Yahoo CEO Jim Lanzone said the tool leverages decades of Yahoo data and user behavior to provide “grounded AI answers.”

The company also announced Yahoo Scout Intelligence Platform across its products. This will include features such as AI summaries in Yahoo Mail, key takeaways in Yahoo News, and game breakdowns in Yahoo Sports. Yahoo says the answer engine behind Scout will become more personalized and focus on deeper experiences as time goes on.

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Advertising and monetization in Scout

Yahoo is testing ads on a small percentage of queries in Scout, powered by Microsoft Advertising, but Yahoo controls ad placement. Ads are charged on a CPC (cost-per-click) basis. Scout will remain free for users. Commerce-related queries may generate revenue through affiliate commissions, a distinction from other AI platforms like ChatGPT, which will charge ads based on impressions. 

Market context and next steps

Scout enters an AI search and answer market already dominated by OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Google, and other conversational engines. Yahoo claims a U.S. user base of 250 million, with 500 million profiles and 18 trillion annual signals, including search queries and clicks, across its ecosystem. 

The company is betting that it can capture a share of the market and compete for a spot. However, how Scout will perform in gaining attention against these existing players is not yet clear. 

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