Yahoo’s Scout AI Search Brings Back Classic Search

Yahoo has introduced a new AI-powered search tool called Yahoo Scout, designed to bring back the clean and simple search experience many users feel has been lost in recent years. The company describes Scout as a modern answer engine that combines traditional web search with artificial intelligence, offering results that are clear, focused, and easy to understand.

Currently available in beta for users in the United States, Yahoo Scout delivers what the company calls a “classic search” style layout, supported by personalised AI responses. Alongside this launch, Yahoo has also unveiled the Yahoo Scout Intelligence Platform, which adds AI features across several of its main services, including Yahoo Mail, News, Finance, and Sports.

Yahoo says it already operates some of the most visited websites in the US, reaching around 90% of internet users through its email, news, finance, and sports platforms. Scout has been developed using years of data based on how people search and interact online, allowing the system to understand what users are looking for and respond in a more helpful way.

To power Yahoo Scout, the company has partnered with Anthropic, using its Claude AI model as the main engine behind the tool. Yahoo explained that it chose Claude because of its speed, accuracy, and focus on safety, which are important qualities for an AI system designed for everyday users.

Yahoo has also continued its long-standing partnership with Microsoft by using Bing’s grounding API. This ensures that Scout’s answers are linked to reliable sources across the open web rather than being created without reference to factual information. In simple terms, Scout blends AI-generated responses with traditional search results to produce answers that are both informative and trustworthy.

According to Yahoo, Scout is informed by data from over 500 million user profiles, a knowledge graph covering more than one billion entities, and around 18 trillion consumer interactions each year across Yahoo’s platforms. This large pool of information allows Scout to generate answers that are relevant and personalised.

The company says this approach helps users make better decisions during what it calls “moments that matter”. These could include checking the weather before travelling, following the outcome of an important sports match, reviewing stock market changes after company earnings, comparing products before buying, or verifying a news story.

Yahoo Scout’s AI features are also being built directly into Yahoo’s existing services. In Yahoo Mail, the tool can create summaries of long email threads. In Yahoo Sports, it provides match breakdowns and insights. In Yahoo News, Scout highlights key points from major stories. Meanwhile, Yahoo Finance users can interact with market data and stock performance through AI-powered questions and analysis tools.

Eric Feng, Senior Vice President and General Manager of the Yahoo Research Group, said that Yahoo’s long history and deep knowledge base make it possible to offer guidance that users can trust. He added that these AI-driven experiences will become more personalised over time and will be smoothly integrated into the services people already use daily.

Looking ahead, Yahoo says Scout will continue to evolve in the coming months. Planned improvements include stronger personalisation, more advanced tools within specific areas such as finance and sports, and new advertising formats designed for generative AI search. However, Yahoo has not yet confirmed when the beta phase will end or when the full version will be released.

One of the most noticeable features of Yahoo Scout is its simple and uncluttered design. Unlike many modern search engines that are filled with images, adverts, and extra features, Scout focuses on presenting information clearly and directly. This gives it a feel similar to early search engines, but with the added intelligence of AI.

For example, when asked where to buy a specific Levi’s trucker jacket in a particular colour, Scout produced a neat summary and a table showing retailers ordered by price. There were no distracting product images, only practical price comparisons. This approach reflects Yahoo’s aim to reduce visual clutter and make results easier to read.

This design choice may appeal to users who already know what they are looking for and simply want useful information without unnecessary extras. It highlights how Yahoo is using AI as a supporting tool rather than as a replacement for search itself.

Instead of positioning Scout as a completely new way to browse the web, Yahoo is presenting it as a smarter way to organise, summarise, and explain information. The focus is on helping people search, read, and compare content in a straightforward and efficient way.

Overall, Yahoo Scout stands out because it delivers a clean and focused search experience that many users say they miss. By combining classic search with modern AI technology, Yahoo is aiming to offer something familiar yet improved.

Users who want to explore the new tool can visit scout.yahoo.com while it remains in beta testing.