CXO

Images: Yahoo's steady home page transformation

By · July 18, 2006, 8:40 AM PST · billdetwiler

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  • Yahoo has made several incremental changes to its home page over the years, but it has held on to the same basic framework since 1994. Here is a snapshot of Yahoo's original home page, sans logo with exclamation point, with 19 blue-linked categories.

    Yahoo

  • In 1995, Yahoo experimented with a funky and colorful logo, a larger array of categories and subcategories, and buttons such as "Add URL" and "Write Us" by its header. Web search became a prominent site feature, as it remains today.

    Yahoo

  • In 1996, Yahoo dropped the funky logo in favor of a cleaner, monochromatic design. But it kept its now-famous exclamation point. Instead of having categories listed side by side, the company aligned them all along the left for easier scrolling. By then, Yahoo had launched properties such as Yahoo Japan and the children's site Yahooligans.

    Yahoo

  • This 1998 clip reveals Yahoo's experimentation with front-and-center banner ads. It later would move a larger, more dynamic ad out of the header area. By this point, Yahoo had local-language sites all over Europe and Asia. It also maintained sites focused on U.S. cities ranging from Boston to Minneapolis, Minn.

    Yahoo

  • In 2000, Yahoo, which had long since gone back to multiple columns of categories and subcategories, prominently displayed its instant-messaging client and its various Yahoo Shopping stores. It also featured top news stories, community pages Yahoo Clubs and eBay competitor Yahoo Auctions.

    Yahoo

  • In 2002, Yahoo Personals took center stage. So did the company's e-mail service. Localization was still a primary home page focus, as was news aggregation.

    Yahoo

  • In 2003, job ads from HotJobs, plus sports content, got special attention. The page became significantly longer, though links seemed a bit less clustered. Entertainment got its own purple tab below Marketplace.

    Yahoo

  • HotJobs, by 2004 a Yahoo unit, got primary real estate on the company's home page that year. The company also featured its broadband partnership with SBC Communications, now owned by AT&T. In addition, it stopped featuring the local Yahoo units and instead gave tabs to products like "Buzz Log - What the world is searching for" and ZIP code-centered weather reports.

    Personalized "My Yahoo" pages got prominent play, as did Yahoo's "Desktop Search" beta.

    Yahoo

  • Yahoo's newest design, released Tuesday, is much more graphical and less cluttered. The top search button resembles that of Google, with search tabs for images, video, news and more. A left column has buttons with icons for general "services" ranging from Autos to Maps to Horoscopes to Real Estate.

    Next to that, users can click through tabs as they would sections of a newspaper to browse everything from News to Video. On the right side of the page, local and personal services such as Yahoo Messenger, Yahoo Mail and Yahoo Movies get their own icon-laden buttons.

    Finally, new feature Yahoo Pulse sits on the bottom-right corner, soliciting answers to questions such as, "Would a parakeet be a good pet?"

    Yahoo

In 1995, Yahoo experimented with a funky and colorful logo, a larger array of categories and subcategories, and buttons such as "Add URL" and "Write Us" by its header. Web search became a prominent site feature, as it remains today.

Yahoo

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By Bill Detwiler

Bill Detwiler is Editor in Chief of TechRepublic and the host of Cracking Open, CNET and TechRepublic's popular online show. Prior to joining TechRepublic in 2000, Bill was an IT manager, database administrator, and desktop support specialist in the ...

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