The problem is that there isn’t a compelling reason for me to use Yahoo.  Google offers a nice clean interface and has indexed everything Yahoo has anyway, so I don’t know why I’d use Yahoo.  Yahoo needs to create a reason why I’d use their search instead of Google’s.  There needs to be something they offer than can’t be found elsewhere.  Here is how they can do it:

1) Give 100% of the advertising commission to website owners who place Yahoo content ads on their website.  This will take some balls because it is a revenue source for Yahoo, but it’s an even bigger revenue source for Google.  Yahoo can afford to give this up because they already make the bulk of their revenue from advertising on their own properties, but content advertising is a serious revenue stream for Google which they can’t afford to give up, especially with their stock price already battered the way it is.  If Yahoo gives 100% of the commission to the website owners this will create serious incentive for them to leave Google for Yahoo.  But there is a catch…

2) Limit this offer to website owners who only allow their website to be indexed into Yahoo’s search engine.  For the website owners to be able to receive their full commission, they need to let Yahoo be the only search engine who can index their website.  This will be a hard sell because many websites are dependent on Google, who commands more than 60% of search traffic, for the droves of traffic it sends their way, and Yahoo is often nothing more than an afterthought.  Preventing Google from indexing their website would mean a certain drop in traffic.

3) Give priority to the Yahoo only websites.  To compensate for the drop in traffic, Yahoo could offer priority ranking to websites taking advantage of this offer.  Yahoo still owns a fair amount of search traffic and if it were to direct more of this traffic to the preferred partner websites it could make up for the drop in traffic not coming from Google.

If this strategy were successful it would create a lot of web content that could only be accessed through Yahoo search, and it would mean there is a reason to search through both search engines rather than just one.  Although this doesn’t necessarily make things easier for web searchers, but it will create competition in the search marketplace, and competition is always good for the consumers.