Yahoo Japan has released two new updates for its SERP user interface this month.One of the updates resembles Google’s knowledge graph, and a further update to mobile search also mirrors Google’s own platform, however both updates have been implemented by Yahoo using its own technology.
As mentioned, Yahoo’s version of the knowledge graph is similar to Google’s, using Wikipedia as the main source in most cases, but refers to its own properties when providing results for image or other related searches.
A marked difference between Yahoo’s knowledge graph is that the space real estate is much smaller when compared with Google’s (see comparison screenshots below).
A second major difference can be seen for the mobile version. Again, Yahoo has copied the “photo carousel” function of Google’s mobile search platform, which allows users to swipe through related searches and Yahoo image search results.
The screenshots show Google’s photo carousel on the left and Yahoo’s on the right, and demonstrate only minimal differences in design and functionality.
To wrap up, the screenshots above clearly demonstrate that Yahoo’s knowledge graph and photo carousel are obviously copied from Google, but there are still differences in positioning, size, used sources and design between the two platforms after Yahoo Japan’s recent updates.
