I like that the games are related to the searches. I don’t know if we will ever get the chance to see the games, but I’d probably try them out if we do.

I agree with you point that our perspectives, as folks who work closely with search, is probably different in many ways from the average searcher. If they decide to move forward with this, I imagine that it would go through some testing, and might see an initial limited rollout.

I could see people enjoying the games though. Who among us doesn’t enjoy a momentary distraction. I’d also suggest that we as SEOs sometimes forget we’re not quite the typical searcher. It wouldn’t surprise me if many search simply because they’re bored and looking for something to do and in that case they might be very attracted to a game.

Maybe people won’t take to the games should Yahoo add them, but I don’t think it will hurt anything so why not.

I don’t know how much this would appeal to people.

They do have a lot of people actively participating in Yahoo Answers, and it has proven to be pretty popular. Might the enthusiasm shown there flow over into search related games? Would people participate in these games and riddles if they were related to the search somehow? Maybe, and maybe not.

Would adding games like this influence people to stop using Yahoo if all they wanted to do was search? I don’t think it would.

Really, how relevant are games to anyone searching for ‘all-weather shoes’. The only benefit of this would be when the result of the game would be the best result for the query or the shoes themselves delivered to the doorstep.