Yahoo! Switches Search Engines

Giorgio Baresi writes "As several sources are reporting, Yahoo! in the last hours dumped Google and rolled out a brand new search engine mainly based on Inktomi search technology and Overture sponsored results. On Monday Yahoo! also launched its own crawler, called "Yahoo! Slurp", which replaced former "Inktomi Slurp". Hey, it seems the search engine war has begun!"

Flawed idea

[Bish.dk]

From the CNET article: [com.com]
One of the key ways Yahoo plans to make money from its search platform is to charge companies for more rapid and frequent inclusion into its index--a program called paid inclusion.

Read: "Google is still king". I want an objective search engine, not one where companies can pay for placement. It seems very stupid of Yahoo! to introduce a product that is flawed this way, if they really want to take on Google. Google has the advantage of currently being considered the best search engine by almost everyone, so Yahoo! needs a superior product if they are serious about getting more popular.

Re:I doubt this is a major problem for Google

[garcia]

Of course it's not a major problem. I know very few people that still use Yahoo as their first choice in search engines (and I am not talking about computer saavy people either).

My mother uses the Google toolbar and knew about it w/o me telling her. My father refuses to use anything other than Google as his homepage.

My number one reason for believing that Google is the all important, #1 search engine: My girlfriend's parents said, "I'll just google for it." at dinner one night (and this is a family where they have a shortcut to every file on the desktop and they use AOL 6.0).

Ugly

[glpierce]

Now that is one ugly search engine. It's amazing they made it look that bad, especially when you consider that they just ripped off the Google color scheme and format.

Hey, it seems the search engine war has begun!

[JohnGrahamCumming]

Or not.

I mean this is just another stop along the way which has brought us the original Yahoo! directory, Altavista, Inktomi, Hotbot, Metacrawler, MSN Search, ..., Google, etc.

It's hardly worth thinking about. So Yahoo! dropped Google: good for them. The best thing we can have is competition between different vendors, then we'll get some innovation. After all, Google innovated like hell to be better than the other engines, now let's see what Yahoo! (or others) can do to be better than Google.

This doesn't have to be portrayed as some kind of war: that assumes that you take sides, and I'm not willing to be on Google's side. If something better comes along I'll switch.

John.

Yahoo's Own Search

[faust13]

Overall, I'm pretty impressed with Yahoo's new search. It returned relavent results, and a little to my surprise that were different that what Google offered.

In the long run competition is good, and I hope that we yield the benefits from having two good search engines. Although, I'm still apprehensive about Yahoo's "paid inclusion." Which seems to offer misleading results to the Internet novice.

Check out what I'm trading [cdgoround.com]

Yahoo's Google results were always a mess...

[blorg]

...hidden as they were among the enormous amount of other crap, it was difficult to tell which were the real results. As it was, I found Yahoo search to be so bad as to dilute Google's reputation if anything.

This new search so far seems better than the previous Yahoo search if anything, as they are putting the 'web' results up front, reasonably uncluttered, with everything else as seperate tabs. They could have done this with the Google ones before, but I presume they wanted to promote their own content.

Slurp?

[Anonymous Coward]

Why not call it Yahoo! Suck and cut out all the marketing nonsense

Yahoo had a search engine??

[filtersweep]

Pardon my sarcasm, but their officially "approved" "directory listings" were never all that easy to break into if someone wanted their own site listed and I've always been very skeptical that sites paid for their placement as Yahoo supplanted their "free" services with more and more paid and subscription-based services. I'm not suggesting that they should not run as a "profitable" business, but what is advertising and what are legitimate search results? It is not unlike deciphering Fox News' editorial content from their 'journalism.' I'm sure this will all quickly devolve into a paid product placement scheme.

Competition is good

[rqqrtnb]

Just cause Google is currently the leader doesnt mean Yahoo doesnt deserve the chance to take the crown!

Would you prefer technology stagnate?

Good luck to the teams at both google and yahoo!

I dont believe in brand loyalty. Cause no company has believed in customer loyalty.

And the winner shall be...

[chamilto0516]

And the winner shall be the search engine that get's what I want somewhere in the first page of results. I know this is a combination of the following:

• Size: how many documents are in the index
• Ease-of-Use: how intuitive is it and how much functionality is there for me to specify what I am looking for (try putting TLA's in your search, can you opt out of blogs or include them, etc.)
• Rankings: how are the results ranked (tied to "Ease-of-use" above). Great the web page I want is on the 5th page. Trust me, 99% of us probably will give up before we find it.

When a web search says that it found 1.7 billion documents that might have what you need, your search criteria is not narrowed enough. An yes, when it shows that it found those 1.7 billion documents in 45msec, that is just some ego stroking.

Re:I love Google.

[L-s-L69]

Google to a lot of people is the ONLY search engine. Its become a brand much more so than IE, or even (arguably) Windows. The phrases 'to google' and 'googling' are fast becoming part of the english language on both sides of the pond. In order to google to keep getting the fat ad subs they live off it still needs to be number one. With IE it was just to eliminate the competition.

Re:Thank you..

[bad-badtz-maru]

Uh, I am paying attention and I don't see the tie-in between Yahoo's actions and Microsoft's "overtures". The first company to successfully monetize search results was our old buddy Google, MS came in late in the game as always.

Too many features.

[rqqrtnb]

Y! should research how many of their features are currently used regularily by their users. IMHO, I do not think that cramming a web site with extra features does improve the user experience.

It is good to see that Y! is interested in iproving their services in many areas, but they should concentrate on some specific business instead of trying to get a part of the market in as many different business markets as possible.

Call me oldfashioned, or offtopic, or whatnot, but I miss the days when you could talk to some store owner who has been specialized in one specific field and who could give you advice based on his experience. Don't get me wrong, I know that such people still exist, but they are getting rarer if you compare to all the Wal-Martish stores that are "diversifying" their line of products and services. The same is seen online...

Re:Some initial results

[jeff munkyfaces]

the most important thing is which links are displayed on the first page of results, and how relevant they are.

i think i'll leave you to analyse these..

Re:I doubt this is a major problem for Google

[hendridm]

On a related note, I was at my parents home this weekend. They like to use Yahoo for their searching. No problem, but they were complaining of popups. I decided to install the Google toolbar for them. The thought crossed my mind to install the Yahoo toolbar, since they prefer Yahoo, however, it came down to a matter of trust. When Google says they're not going to resell my information or track my moves, they've given me no reason to disbelieve them. But seeing some of the ads on Yahoo makes me feel they're willing to do anything for an extra click. I appreciate that they're in the business to make money, just as Google is, but Google just makes me feel more comfortable about it.

Not a big deal either, since there's a goof chance my parents won't take notice the new bar anyway ;)

It is sad that you have to question every motive and move you make on the Internet thanks to all the toxic waste that is present. One wrong subscription and your inbox is hosed. I made that mistake the other day. Fortunately, I used a throw-away [spamgourmet.com] e-mail address so the damage was minimal.

Re:..its own crawler, called "Yahoo! Slurp"..

[LostCluster]

I take it you haven't been reading at -1...

Google for Vicki Phillips

[Moderation abuser]

She was the stunt double for Gena Lee Nolin and plays the Darak'na in most of the Sheena episodes. See if you can get a photograph of her sans makeup.

I wanted to see what she looked like under the makeup once, happened to have the laptop running at the time and fully expected to find a picture in seconds through Google. Nope. Eventually using other search engines turned up her photo and stunt information.

I've said this before but it's good that there's competition, Google isn't the be all and end all of search engines. It looks fairly wide but shallow.

Re:I love Google.

[Glog]

It's not a question about who gets to index more webpages. It's a question of control of the flow of information. If you control the flow you can pretty much demand any price for your services.

Re:Result relevance

[puppet10]

Also I think its a good thing if there are a number of search engines with results on the same order of relevance as google returns but using different algos to get there.

The more there are the harder it is for the people trying to distort the results to succeed in distorting all of the various methods.

Re:I love Google.

[ykardia]

The logic was, you owned the browser, you owned the 'net. And although you could make the case that IE won the war, how does IE being the most popular browser translate into money for MS when they give it away for free? I didn't understand it then, and I don't understand it now.

Being the most popular browser on the net means that you can add your own extensions to it, and a lot of people designing websites will cater towards that. If you don't release IE for other platforms, people who don't use your OS won't be able to use the websites that have IE specific content. That's a way of giving people incentives to use IE and your OS.

I have been pissed of lots of times, trying to use IE-specific websites (banks seem to like to do this especially) with a different browser, and it didn't work.

Re:Flawed idea

[Dun Malg]

I want an objective search engine, not one where companies can pay for placement

I agree with you, but that doesn't happen with google?

Not overtly, at least. Google doesn't let people pay for higher placement in their regular search. Paying Google advert money just gets you better placement next to the search results. Google searches do come up with a lot of junk, but you know at least they're trying to minimize it. To create a bizarre, tortured analogy:

Google: "We promise not to crap on your lawn. Others might be following us, and they might crap on your lawn, but we'll try to get rid of them if we can. Any crap we're paid to show you, we'll display it on the sidewalk for you and you can decide whether you want it or not."

Yahoo: "We're gonna crap on your lawn. Good luck trying not to step in it."

Re:How does this improve Yahoo!?

[Dun Malg]

Yeah, google is real pure and kicks total ass. Ever notice how many spammy search results redirect to ebay and amazon? Why can't they fix that? Oh wait, notice how many of the adwords displayed on the side are for ebay or amazon?

Not really Google's fault there. That just shows how ebay and amazon are agressive marketers. In addition to paying for google ads, amazon has a bizarre affiliate-type program that basically replicates their pages on other people's sites, essentially spamming ALL search engines. How many times have you popped up results for a word combo or phrase that happened to appear in someone's amazon review and gotten the same damn thing, on different sites, over and over? This [google.com], for example, is what I got when I was looking for hacks to the REB1200 ebook reader. I'm sure google would kill that crap if there was an easy way. For the time being I suggest just picking an unusual word from the offending amazon review and exclude it, like this. [google.com]

Re:is it just me...

[LnxAddct]

Well I think this whole switch has more to do with naming issues and marketing rather then providing whats best for the customer. Afterall, Yahoo! used to have commercials all the time saying "Do you Yahoo!?" however noone started saying, "Oh I don't know this, I'll go yahoo for it". But people all the time say I'll google for it, and I've never seen a google commercial.If they continue using google then there attempts at getting people to make yahoo a verb are pointless. Either way Yahoo isn't all that great and never was.
Regards,
Steve

Re:Tried Both, Google Wins

[KFury]

""Paid Inclusion" just means they spider your site every day. It doesn't affect the site ranking."

Are you sure about that? As part of the paid inclusion package [yahoo.com], the publisher will:

"Receive detailed click-through reports with rank, query volume, and keyword capture"

I'd be very surprised if Yahoo doesn't give these sites a ranking boost, because a site that pays $10,000 a year to have 400 pages included in the index won't renew if they find that most of their pages are on the 3rd or later page of search results, and Yahoo won't want to lose that revenue.

There's nothing on Yahoo's site that says they don't bias results for those who pay, and you can bet if the search results were unbiased, they'd be shouting it from the rooftops, like Google does [google.com]:

"Google does not sell placement within the results themselves (i.e., no one can buy a higher PageRank)."

Finally, if said publisher, after using paid inclusion, decides to not renew after a year's inclusion, their rank would go down. It would have to, or else why would they continue to pay Yahoo in the first place? Most product pages aren't updated every day or even every week, so paying tens of thousands of dollars for 48-hour updates isn't realistic.

If not paying for your link causes your rank to drop, then you're paying for placement.

Re:How does this improve Yahoo!?

[joeykiller]

Why give Yahoo! thumbs down for using their own technology? If you're an average Slashdot user, shouldn't you be an advocate of choice?

To simplify: We have Gnome and we have KDE, we have Windows, Linux and Mac OS X, we have Perl and Python. Would you like a world where everbody used Windows, or everybody said that Perl was mandatory? Or to live in a one party state?

Maybe Yahoo! and MSN's new search engines won't be of Google quality in the beginning, but I guess they'll catch up. We should cheer them on. Google's starting to get a position where they actually can (if they want, I'm not saying they are) control the flow of information. So my position on this is that the more search engines, and the more equal they are both in capabilities and market share, the better.

Re:I can picture the board meeting

[ProudClod]

Yeah, teoma are really fair with their $30 charge to submit a URL :)

Alltheweb I liked a while back (when altavista was king), but I can't actually tell any difference between it and google these days. You don't get anywhere by staying the same, they need to innovate (man)

Re:I doubt this is a major problem for Google

[TwistedGreen]

But doesn't google (v.) mean to search with Google (n.)? It's a testament to the vast popularity of Google, not the loss of their trademark. There's a difference here: most kleenex you use isn't Kleenex-brand kleenex, but who would say they're going to google with Yahoo?

Re:Result relevance

[wintermute740]

I've actually been complaining of relevance of Google's results for awhile now. I always seem to have to wade through three pages of sites trying to sell me %search_item% rather than information about %search_item% but it wasn't always this way. I hope Yahoo doesn't pull a Google and do the same thing. If not, I, for one, welcome our new Yahoo overloards.

wrap-up

[falsification]

Well the thread is wrapping up and again the discussion was pretty boring. We can do better, people. We can do better.

A couple of big points that were unspoken AFAICT:

• Yahoo competing again in the search engine market is good. Yahoo has the financial resources to play ball with Google and MSN. With three real competitors, none of them can get away with mediocrity anymore. (Yahoo now owns Inktomi, Teoma, Ask Jeeves and lots of other name brands.)
• Yahoo will be building back its index over the next couple of months. They will also continue to tweak their algorithm. To help Yahoo get back on its feet, we should run lots of searches through Yahoo for a while. The search examples will give Yahoo the data it needs to improve.
• No one mentioned that lots of people login at Yahoo, and nobody logs in at Google. Presumably, Yahoo could use their already-existing cookies to target search results more effectively. OTOH, this could result in privacy invasions. Google does have its own infamous cookie, but it does not necessarily carry personal ID information on it.
• Somebody said Google screwed up by not issuing their IPO already. Good point.
• Somebody else said Google (via Blogger) is adopting Atom while Yahoo is sticking with RSS. I wonder what MSN will go with.
• Lots of small search engines, like Scrub the Web [scrubtheweb.com] still exist. Their indices tend to be small. It must take several tens of millions of dollars in capital to get in the search engine game in a major way.
• Why hasn't anyone tried a different search engine business plan? Instead of trying to trick users into coming to your site and clicking on ads, how about charging a subscription fee to search ad-free? It would be like Northern Light, except it would index the whole web.
• Why don't we have semantic searching yet? I want to search web pages with "location:belgium" or "year:1999."
• The search engines are missing out on a big market: blogs. The blog search engines like Bloogz [bloogz.com] have an interesting niche to develop all by themselves.
• Perhaps Google's Page Rank feature is overrated. Why not index words immediately before and after those that are linked, not just the link words? Wouldn't that increase search result relevancy?

I'm looking forward to better results on all of the engines.