The Mercury News reports on how Yahoo believes it can build its search audience by focusing on the user “experience,” rather than viewing search as a raw data query.

“‘What’s notable about many of the stable of researchers at Yahoo backing that effort is that many of them [...] aren’t even computer scientists.

They are part of a team of social scientists — cognitive psychologists, sociologists, economists and ethnographers — that Yahoo hopes will help close the search gap with the dominant Google. [...]

The plan to broaden Yahoo Labs into a multidisciplinary team where social scientists work directly with computer scientists is one element of Yahoo’s strategy to hold people on its Web properties, after its new branding campaign — Yahoo’s single largest integrated global campaign ever — brings them in the door.”

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