21 replies to this topic

[YahooMike]

I’m not certain if folks here have seen Forrester’s recent Consumer Technographics Survey, but it cites some interesting stats on Yahoo! vs. Google search. According to the survey, Yahoo! Search and Google are at a draw – personalization, presentation and quality of service are considered the big differentiators now, with the nod ultimately going to Yahoo! Search. PC World cites the survey’s findings (link below).

While this is great validation, I think we also recognize the fact that we still have a lot to accomplish and we’re working really hard to make improvements to our services and more important, address the issues and concerns identified on this forum and others. Much more to come in the weeks and months ahead.

http://story.news.ya...38&sid=95612658

[robwatts]

Nice article, good PR for you guys.

Good to hear also your recognition on the way to to go too YahooMike. Not many companies are honest enought to hold their hands up and admit their failings. Kudos for that.

Im sure that plenty of us would be more than interested to hear some considered views on where Yahoo feel they could do better, especially with regard to the Yahoo/webmaster relationship.

Many people might suggest that its all well and good recognising failings etc, but words are pretty empty without any firm commitments and or timescales for improvements.

[Jill]

I've personally been using Yahoo Search more and more when I need to find something and am sick of scrolling through spammy directory after spammy directory at Google...

Can usually find decent sites for the same keyword searches much faster at yahoo these days.

[lyn]

I've also found myself returning to Yahoo more lately since I found that the results for the main keywords I track for my websites get better results on Yahoo.

Part of it's just to see my sites ranked above competitors on the same page, of course -- but it's had a real effect on my general confidence in the listings, too.

L.

[powerofeyes]

For what its worth most of our client sites gets too low traffic from Yahoo though they rank similiar to google,

And I personally always find what I need in Google,

And webmasterworld Guys are very smart, I dont think Yahoo can answer their questions here,

http://www.webmaster...orum35/2535.htm

[Jill]

I'm just talking about yahoo from a regular person perspective. Whether they show my sites or my client's sites is a whole other story.

When you're looking for something specific and Google only shows weird directories that seem to be scraped from somewhere, it gets pretty discouraging.

It's funny how trained we are to use Google. I wasted like a half hour there a few weeks ago, not wanting to give up the fight. When I finally gave up and searched at Yahoo I found what I wanted first try. Weird!

[powerofeyes]

I Rarely use Yahoo on a User Perspective, I find whatever I need in google any technical information and commerical products like books, CDs etc, I rarely get an oppurtunity to use Yahoo,

If that time comes ill definetely give a positive comment about Yahoo,

[isoseo]

Colony says a great search site has three components: personalization, presentation, and quality of service.

Finally, from Forrester chair and CEO, we get the word. Is it official now?

Colony also points out that few, if any, barriers to entry exist in the search engine universe

There are few, if any, barriers to drilling and exploration, too. But my home-made drilling tools used in my backyard will not make me that successful, after all.

Pathetic bit of PR. Yahoo is quite good, but it doesn't re-index freely included pages often enough to have my trust in the freshness of its results.

[csjavi]

When you're looking for something specific and Google only shows weird directories that seem to be scraped from somewhere, it gets pretty discouraging.

That's weird. I get more spammy search result pages and especially ODP clones with Yahoo.

[Jill]

Jani, in my case, when I was frustrated with Google and found what I wanted right away with Yahoo, I didn't actually look through most of the Y results because I didn't need to. There very well could have been lots of spam in the results that I didn't check.

The particular search I made was when I was looking for a "graphical flight tracker" when my daughter was traveling to Hawaii a few weeks ago. I remembered using one years ago, but hadn't seen it in awhile.

Google absolutely could not find it, but it was easily found in Yahoo. Now, it just so happens that Yahoo appears to own the graphical flight tracker these days, so that may have had something to do with it, but still, that doesn't explain why Google couldn't/ wouldn't find it. And the results it did find had NOTHING to do with the search. They were definitely spam pages designed to come up for any searches having to do with flights and stuff.

I don't do a whole lot of personal searching, so maybe this was just an anomaly, but I do recall having a similar experience for some other thing I was looking for not too long ago, but I don't recall the details.

But for information, like if one of the kids has a question about something, you can easily find it quickly and easily at Google. I assume you can also with Yahoo, but since I don't have any problems with G in that respect, I don't usually bother to check Y. Sometimes, if I just happen to have Y open for one reason or another I'll use it to search, and seem to easily find what I'm looking for.

I especially like the weather thing...where you just put your zipcode and the word "weather" in and see the 5-day forecast! Very nice.

[Randy]

Congrats Mike !

Personally, I don't envy Yahoo's plight as the competition have been given a ton of free advertising and help in building their brand over the last several years. And rightly so since they were the only game in town. Good luck with overcoming that and pulling back some of that "Real User" market.

I think the competition that's heating up in the Search Industry is a good thing. Likely to make all of the majors more responsive to user concerns. (Note I said user not SEO/Webmaster concerns.)

I also agree with Rob that it's good to see someone actually admit that they have a ways to go yet. It bodes well for Yahoo! Others should try it.

[lyn]

Has anyone seen any change in the number of referring Yahoo searches in their website stats?

L.

[Randy]

We discussed it somewhere around here a couple of times Lyn. Some are, some aren't. A lot seems to depend upon the type of site and what market sector it is targeting.

[BarbarasB&B]

Hello to all,
Once a week I browse through the different topics looking for gold and here I thought I found some but now I'm confused. Jill, you mentioned that Yahoo! appears to give you better results. With that I raced to Y and queried with my usual keyword phrases to find out where I ranked. I'm up there. No wait that other site died last year. Hey that's not my title tag I haven't used that in over 8 months.
What I found relating to me is that "maybe" it's not that spammy but it's surely not up to date. Much of the info relating to me and my competition appears to be in need of serious spidering. Or am I missing something.

[Randy]

Does the site in question happen to have a Yahoo! Directory listing Barbara?

I haven't checked recently, but a couple of months ago Yahoo! Search listings would default to the Yahoo! Directory title and snippet, if the site was also listed in the Directory.

On a completely unrelated note, I had to go out and buy the daughter a new Compaq Pressario computer yesterday since the power supply died in her old Gateway. (No way and I going to pay Gateway 1/2 the price of a new computer for a power supply. )

The new Compaq came with the Yahoo! Toolbar pre-installed. That type of thing should bring them more of the home consumer market.