Right around the time the Bing/Yahoo! merger was announced, Yahoo! claimed they were never a part of the search game, even if nobody believed this claim.

Yahoo! just launched its new search format. On the left column, you can filter results or refine your search by related concepts. More prominent placement for Search Pad and an expansion of Search Assist are also featured. Yahoo! also claims it has improved image and video search, and speed and performance are also better across the board.

These changes are now in effect in the U.S., UK, France, Spain, Mexico and India.  Yahoo! will continue to roll out the new format to other markets over the coming weeks. The new format appears to be more visually appealing. Below is a screen shot of how the new format looks using the search “Kansas City”:

You can see from the search above how easy it is to switch your results to different topics like The Kansas City Star or Wikipedia.  You can also quickly pull up local businesses and make slight changes to the search (for example, “Kansas City restaurants” or “Kansas City weather”). These alterations pull up other filters to customize your search, including The Weather Channel or Yelp.

This is a step in the right direction for Yahoo! and, hopefully, a sign of things to come.