Yahpp CEO Marissa Mayer is ‘very excited’ about contextual search

The Yahoo CEO said Tuesday that she was bullish on search, indicated more Asian investments may be on offer, and said one of the most valuable things about the company is the vast amount of information it has about its users. Speaking at a Goldman Sachs technology conference in San Francisco, Mayer said she’s still excited the possibility that search offers for the firm, especially contextual search where ads appear on content pages.

If you think Yahoo has given up on search, think again. The company may have handed its back-end search operations to Microsoft, but Marissa Mayer thinks there’s work to be done on mobile devices, particularly around contextual search. Contextual search aims to give people the right information, at the right time, by looking at signals such as where they’re located and what they’re doing — such as walking or driving a car. Mobile devices tend to provide a lot more of those signals. “When I look at things like contextual search, I get really excited,” the Yahoo CEO said Tuesday at the Goldman Sachs Technology and Internet Conference in San Francisco. “The amount of information available to build a service on is just incredible,” she said.