Larry Cornett, the relatively new Director of User Experience Design at Yahoo and Kathryn Kelly, Director of PR for Yahoo! Search, speak with Gord Hotchkiss of Search Engine Land.

Read the interview here.

Gord asked Larry and Catherine about the Yahoo search experience and how their own internal usability testing has led to the design and the experience we see today. Further he asked them about their plans for the future and what their strategy is for differentiating themselves from the competition, namely Microsoft and Google.

Eye-Tracking Report: Google, MSN and Yahoo! Compared

Hotchkiss conducted eye-movement research on the major search engines. He concludes:

“In the study we found Yahoo emphasized the top sponsored results more than either Microsoft or Google. They showed top sponsored results for more searches and devoted more real estate to them. This had the effect of giving Yahoo! the highest percentage of click throughs on top sponsored, but on first visits only. On subsequent visits the click through rate on these top sponsored ads dropped to a rate lower than what was found on Google or Microsoft.”

Read a sample of the report they sell at Enquiro.