Yahoo Scout proves AI search can support publishers after all

Yahoo recently announced new tools within Yahoo Scout, the company’s AI search engine, now in beta, that will support publishers and the open web.

It offers a stark contrast to the more closed ecosystem approach of Google and other AI search products.

Why does this matter? Artificial intelligence has had a devastating impact on publisher traffic as AI companies scrape, train, and repurpose publishers’ stories, typically without permission or payment. (Disclosure: Ziff Davis, Mashable’s parent company, in April 2025 filed a lawsuit against OpenAI, alleging it infringed Ziff Davis copyrights in training and operating its AI systems.)

New research from Chartbeat published this week shows that small publishers lost 60 percent of their search traffic between Dec. 2024 to Dec. 2025. Medium publishers lost 47 percent, and large publishers 22 percent.

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Yahoo has been promoting Yahoo Scout at SXSW 2026, which comes to a close on Wednesday in Austin, Texas. When I first tried Yahoo Scout at SXSW, the first thing I noticed was how many links were included to publishers and other sources. And Yahoo says that’s intentional.

“The open web is essential for building quality AI experiences and we are committed to building Scout in a way that’s trusted by users and sustainable for publishers,” said Eric Feng, SVP and GM of Yahoo Research Group. 

Feng added, “Every answer in Yahoo Scout includes clear attribution and referral back to content publishers so we can be transparent with our users and provide them with additional context and coverage where needed.”

So, apparently, you can create AI search tools that support the writers, editors, publishers, bloggers, and creators actually generating the information.

Meanwhile, Google has found many creative ways to keep searchers within its ecosystem of products as long as possible.

Once upon a time, Google measured success by how quickly users left Google. The idea was that if a searcher left the search engine quickly, that meant they had found the information they needed. This was the philosophy of the old “Don’t be evil” Google of old. 

It even used to be part of the company’s “Ten things we know to be true” mission statement: “We may be the only people in the world who can say our goal is to have people leave our website as quickly as possible.”

But Google has changed, and that mission statement has become something of a time capsule.

“Google has had a long history of making moves that keep searchers in their own ecosystem,” said Lily Ray, VP of SEO Strategy at Amsive, in an email to Mashable.

For instance, “on AI Overviews, clicking ‘Show More’ now leads the user to AI Mode,” Ray said. “I would argue this is Google’s most aggressive move yet to encourage users to switch to AI Mode. It appears that Google is trying to strike a balance between encouraging more usage of its AI products, while keeping users clicking on Google Ads, which generally still appear prominently in the traditional search results.”

A Google representative declined to comment for this story. However, Robby Stein, VP of Product for Search at Google, has previously said that Google is taking steps to encourage users to click on outside sources. However, the data on declining search traffic paints a very different picture.

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“I see Google’s new AI products as an extension of this ‘Zero Click’ trend — it’s in their best interest to keep users on Google as long as possible (like any other online platform),” Ray said.

Yahoo introduces MyScout and publisher pages

In addition to Yahoo Scout, the company has launched MyScout, a personalized AI homepage for users. MyScout uses content from Yahoo Mail, News, Finance, and Sports to create a custom daily briefing for users, similar to Samsung’s Now Brief.

In addition, Yahoo has launched publisher brand pages within Yahoo News to support publishers that syndicate content on Yahoo.

“Yahoo Scout is built on our 30-year-history as a trusted guide to the internet. We have a proprietary knowledge graph of over 1 billion entities, unique insights from the trillions of consumer events that occur across the Yahoo ecosystem, and personalization signals from hundreds of millions of logged-in user profiles,” Feng told Mashable.

This article reflects the opinion of the author.