Yahoo Is Not A Search Engine Anymore

14. October 2008

My friend Bin pinged me and asked me what I thought of this article. Here was my response:

"That's interesting. I've been reading some about that. I don't see how serving Google ads is going to help Yahoo much though. Maybe the ads will be more relevant and people will click them more? Is that what they are trying to do?  Even if it makes Yahoo more money, it seems like a band aid. If it's not a band aid, then I see it as a move toward using Google for organic and paid search.
 
I think the problem is Yahoo just doesn't have enough people using their search engine They should focus on improving their SERPs or do something innovative with their SERPs instead of focusing on paid search. Then people will come and use their engine.
 
Or even better would be to launch some sort of agressive advertising campaign showcasing Yahoo products.  Yahoo has a ton of stuff Google doesn't have, but people don't know about it. They own Flikr, Hot Jobs, Personals, Games, all kinds of stuff that Google doesn't have. If they would market some of those products then, they could build long term customers. I think if Yahoo marketed themselves as what they are (a full service internet destination) instead of trying to be like Google, they would have much better success. Google is at the top search. Yahoo just needs to realize that, and find their strenghts elsewhere (ie. in Googles weaknesses). Yahoo is not really a search engine anymore. "

What are your thought's on the article? Do you agree or disagree with me?

Yahoo

Comments

10/14/2008 2:28:09 PM #
I'd agree with that - Yahoo is no longer a serious search engine. I remember Aaron Wall over at SEOBook writing a post a couple of months ago looking at Yahoo's search results for mobile phones - at that time the top 4 search results had remained the same for 3 years, strongly suggesting that Yahoo was selling placements within their organic results.

Live Search is far better in my opinion but it'll never become any kind of competitor to Google whilst it's so strongly associated with Microsoft.
10/14/2008 3:02:29 PM #
Yeah Live is better than Yahoo, but I gotta say, Live is not good for some queries. Anything technical - like programming related searches Live has a hard time dealing with.

I set Live as my default search engine in my browser a week ago and some queries are good, but others? ... well, I find myself quickly switching to Google for better results. The only thing I use Yahoo for as far as search is paid search - on the advertiser side.

10/14/2008 10:20:14 PM #
I would agree that Yahoo is not the search engine most people think to start with-it even seems that the phrase "google it" is starting to mean the same as "search for it" when using the internet.  It seems it would be wisest for Yahoo to show off their big strengths than to try to fight for something they can't yet stand tall against, Google Search Engine.  
10/19/2008 9:44:54 AM #
I am not so sure I would write them off just yet as they suddenly switched their look and focus recently.

Remember they turned the Microsoft offer down?

Seen how similar their results look to Google now?

Seen the keyword sugfgestions?

My tip is that Yahoo is about to fight back big time...

Katie
10/19/2008 6:36:55 PM #
Katie - wow yeah i just did a couple searches, and the Yahoo SERPs where REALLY similar to Google. Interesting.
10/19/2008 11:59:02 PM #
now a days yahoo is working more than google and they are indexing the pages at very high rate which shows they are just interested in Quantity not the quality

10/21/2008 8:28:06 PM #
@ proxy yeah i agree with you its like they are focusing on the quantity of their search result not the quality of the results. .Google is still the best!
les
11/5/2008 3:18:22 PM #
Yahoo still has its place as a search engine. It still has a loyal base of users and I get about half my traffic from Yahoo. It depends on what type of site you have. Google ads will further erode that loyal base - that's is why Google are keen to go down that track. I cannot believe that Yahoo execs are blind to that.
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