Yahoo! is hoping to pick up more kid traffic with its freshly rebranded Yahoo! Kids (the site formerly known as Yahooligans!). The redesigned portal offers expanded applications and additional kid-friendly content for the six to 11 demo.

According to comScore Media Metrix report from October 2006,Yahooligans! was the number-one destination for the six to 11 demo. The site attracted 897,000 unique visitors between October 2005 and October 2006, scoring a 282% increase over the previous year. So while the model certainly wasn’t broken, the company felt its one-size-fits-all approach was due for an overhaul.

Launched this month, Yahoo! Kids has a cleaner, more navigable look and offers specific destinations for sports highlights, interactive games, educational content, cartoons, TV shows and movies via the central advertiser-supported hub. Categories such as ‘3 Hot Bands’ and ‘Cool Stuff’ are front and center on the homepage, providing prime real estate for property promotion.

And the good news for kids producers out there is that finding more content to join the likes of programming culled from National Geographic and BBC Kids to fuel the site is a top priority. ‘This is a call out to the industry, we think this is a great opportunity to work with other content providers out there,’ says Paul Marcum, general manager of youth content for Santa Monica-based Yahoo! He adds the ‘model is open’ for the partnership deals. At this time, however, the company has no plans to produce its own content, unlike AOL-owned chief rival KOL has done.

Marcum says the new site will continue to evolve, adding communication, video and musical applications as they are developed. ‘This is Yahoo! Kids 1.0, expect Yahoo! Kids 1.5 three to six months from now,’ he says. ‘We will be treating this space very aggressively.’ GR