Yahoo!’s New Homepage and ‘Mojo’

Will Yahoo!’s new homepage be a hit and help the company “get its mojo back”? I’ve written about the new homepage and some interesting related search initiatives on SEL. I like what I saw, but haven’t used it yet (it launches this afternoon).

It’s chief feature is a left nav with customizable widgets that allow users to add Yahoo! sites or third party content.

Yahoo! might argue that it doesn’t need to get its mojo back because, despite all the coverage given to its search share battle with Google, the site is still tops in lots of categories (according to press materials distributed yesterday):

• Yahoo! continues to have the most engaged audience in the US with over 42 billion total minutes, representing 12.2% of all time spent online in the US. (comScore Media Metrix, US, June 2009).
• Yahoo! has 4.2 billion visits and an average of 27.7 visits per user per month (comScore Media Metrix, US, June 2009).
• There are 330 million unique visitors to Yahoo! Homepages around the world (comScore World Metrix, May 2009). In the US, the Yahoo! homepage has over 113 million users and has grown its audience by 17.2 percent in the past year (comScore Media Metrix, US, June 2009).
• My Yahoo! is the #1 personalized start page with 42 million monthly users worldwide (comScore World Metrix, May 2009). In the US, My Yahoo! remains the category leader with over 23 million users. (comScore Media Metrix, US, June 2009).
• Yahoo! News continues to be #1 in its category in the US with over 51 million users, growing 32.1% year over year, and has the most engaged audience with 311 million visits monthly. (comScore Media Metrix, US, June 2009).
• Yahoo! Mail remains #1 in the US with more than 2 times the audience (over 103 million unique visitors) of #2 ranked Windows Live Hotmail (at 47 million) (comScore Media Metrix, US, June 2009).
• Yahoo! Finance remains the category leader with 20 million unique visitors and has the most engaged audience, responsible for 33.9 percent of all time spent within the Finance News/Research category. Yahoo! Finance maintains its lead in the Finance News/Research category, and reports the strongest audience growth among the top five sites year-over-year (+14 percent) (comScore Media Metrix, US, June 2009).
• Yahoo! Calendar is the #1 online calendar in the US with 4.1 million users, 1.1 million more than its nearest competitor, Google Calendar at 2.9 million users (comScore Media Metrix, US, June 2009).
• Yahoo! Shopping maintained its #1 spot in the comparison shopping category. It has grown 12.1 percent in the past year in the US with 21.6 million users (comScore Media Metrix, US, June 2009).
• Yahoo! omg! is the #1 site in the entertainment news category with 22 millions users.  TMZ comes second with 13 million users (comScore, Media Metrix, US, June 2009).
• Yahoo! Sports leads the category for the past year ahead of ESPN by 3.7 million visitors. Yahoo! Sports has grown its audience by 8.9 percent over the past year and now commands 19.5 percent of all duration spent with Sports content online and reaches 31.1 percent of the online sports audience (comScore Media Metrix, US, June 2009).
• Yahoo! Games is the #2 online game site with over 19.2 million users. (comScore Media Metrix, US, June 2009).