I was all set to write an article predicting the future of
search engines, when Yahoo dropped Google and replaced it with
its own engine. Now that's big news. In less than twenty-four
hours, Google went from about 79% of the market share to about
51%, almost overnight. And what a welcome relief it is too!
Being #1 in Google was great, but when you had the misfortune of
dropping even a couple of positions you really felt it. Now
there will be more stability; if you drop in Google today, your
hits from Yahoo will remain consistent.
What is the new Yahoo? Last year, Yahoo bought the AltaVista, Fast, and Inktomi search
engines. The new Yahoo results are none of these. Many people
are saying that the results come from a new Inktomi because the
results are similar; but the results are also similar to all the
other search engines out there. In comparing these engines, it
seems to me that Yahoo's results are from a brand new engine.
Maybe they took parts and ideas from all the search engines they
bought - maybe they even took the best parts - , but whatever
they did, the result is something completely new. Which search engine is better? I will be comparing Google and Yahoo for the terms "music", "art
prints and posters", "Bahamas real estate", "mosquito nets", and
"liposuction". The other search engines all hold less than 4% of
the market share (except for MSN which uses Yahoo's Inktomi), so
I won't be considering them. Here is what I found in the top 10
results for each keyphrase: Music Yahoo offers a lot of music resource sites. Information about
music from different sources such as magazine, TV and other
music news sites are found 6 times in the top 10 results. It
also offered downloading and file sharing programs 3 times. The
10th result was an audio player program site. Google has a lot more diversity. There were 3 music resource
sites (but no magazines), one downloading program, one CD store,
one radio station (Yahoo radio), one music directory, and the
10th result was an audio player program site. Google also had 2
sites in its top ten that were of no value whatsoever; MP3.com
which just has one page stating that they no longer offer the
services that they used to (with links to their parent company),
and music.com, which is nothing more than an email gathering
site for a newsletter (not a single link on the entire page). Google's diversity is a big bonus, but the 2 spam/junk/useless
sites really hurt it. The results? Yahoo 1, Google 0. Art Prints And Posters Yahoo offers 6 stores, while Google offers 5. The other links
are all affiliate spam with no content whatsoever (just links to
stores), with the exception of one of Yahoo's links, which has
some biographical content about artists. So Google has 5 spam
sites, and Yahoo has 3 and a half.
Yet another round goes to Yahoo. Bahamas Real Estate For this keyphrase, I found results between Google and Yahoo to
be quite similar. The only differences were sites by actual
realtors and sites that were simply property listings. Both
types of results are useful, with Google having an edge in
realtors. Google had some lower quality sites, but the
information was just as good even though they did seem less
professional. On the other hand, Yahoo did have one site that
was nothing more than a links page from another realtor's site.
Big boo boo. This one goes to Google. Mosquito Nets
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Shawn Campbell is an enthusiastic player in the ecommerce
marketplace and co-founded Red Carpet Web Promotion, Inc.
(http://www.redcarpetweb.com/). He has been researching and
developing marketing strategies to achieve more prominent
listings in search engine results since 1998. Shawn is one of
the earliest pioneers in the search engine optimization field.
Contact: shawn@redcarpetweb.com
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