Yahoo Passes Google in Total Items Searched

tonyquan writes "Yahoo announced today that its search engine passed Google's for overall capacity, with 20 billion documents and images indexed versus 11.3 billion for Google. Observers had previously pegged Yahoo's index at just 8 billion items. The growth is due to a recent expansion effort. More info can be found on the Yahoo! Search blog and at CNet."

fantastic

[abrotman]

My google-fu isn't bad, but I sometimes have trouble finding relevant results. I figure adding 9 billion more possible results should complicate things quite nicely.

Interesting

[Rupy]

Provided it is correct... I don't suppose there is any third party organisation that was allowed limited access to the data to confirm it?

I've noticed that recently

[Eightyford]

I've found that yahoo! slurp is almost always my most frequent visitor to my websites.

Re:Great...

[MacJedi]

It's been about 2 years since Google stopped returning useful results. Now, most of the results are crap.

This has not, in general, been my experience. Can you give an example where a reasonable search yields results that are mostly "crap?"

95% of which is crap

[darkCanuck]

• useless blogs and geocities "websites": 12 billion
• clipart, midi and hideous backgrounds for above websites: 6 billion
• links to outdated or expired user sessions: 1 billion
• real content: 1 billion, if lucky

The only thing I ever use Yahoo for is if and when my internet connection seems slow or dead I ping yahoo.com. It's just been a habit since the 90's.

Several interpretations

[Alomex]

I read this in one of two ways:

a) Yahoo crawler is not as discriminating as google, collecting loads of garbage and mirrored sites

or

b) Google is finally falling behind the Web. In the past every snazy search engine eventually got overwhelmed by web growth and fell beihnd. Has that time arrived for Google?

On a different note I've heard a rumor that Google's total CPU count across all its server sites is fast approaching a million. If this is true, talk about barriers to entry! Anyone out there who can confirm or deny this?

It's true, and easy to check...

[NotQuiteReal]

I did a search for "a" on both Google and Yahoo.

Results:

Google: "1-10 of about 3,120,000,000 .06 sec"
Yahoo: "1-10 of about 11,300,000,000 .08 sec"

Top yahoo hit - some punk band. Top Google hit, apple .com.

Gee, who do you think will make more money with those results... ;-)

My own - albeit anecdotal - experience...

[mosel-saar-ruwer]

I've spent the last few days doing some very important searching - we're thinking about launching a new product in a rather arcane field, and I wanted to be absolutely certain who the potential competition might be - hence I decided to search both Google & Yahoo!.

Guess what? Yahoo! search beats Google search, hands down. Not even close.

Two thoughts:

1) While everybody was oohing and ahhing about Google's IPO, Yahoo! very quietly went about purchasing some excellent search engine/caching outfits, like Inktomi and AllTheWeb, and, owing to the great dot-com bust, paid only pennies on the dollar in acquiring some outstanding talent and intellectual property.

2) I think Google's been reading too many of their own press releases, and has been resting on their laurels for a few years now. And it doesn't help matters that their CEO, Eric Schmidt [cnn.com], is the same fella who damn near drove Novell to bankruptcy.

Re:Great...

[AEton]

Searching for information on digital cameras, especially less popular ones, often yields dozens of pages of sites that want to sell one and no descriptions of user experiences or reviews. (Even the manufacturers' own product description is usually hard to find.)

This problem is not specific to digital cameras - it's endemic to any piece of hardware that the majority of the Internet is interested in selling rather than discussing. It's great that your Yahoo! Storefront and its twenty clones want to give me a great deal on the Flibbet Jibbet Cog, but I'd really like to know what people who use it think about it.

(Occasionally some results with "flibbetyjibbit linux compatibility" will work - but never general product information!)

Re:Great...

[skiflyer]

I wouldn't call it useless... but certainlly not as useful as it used to be for me... this weekend I needed to learn how to countersink a screw.

So I searched "how to countersink a screw"... and first a handful of links selling bits used in countersinking, then a page or two of links for how to projects which required the countersinking of a screw... then a few links about what a countersunk screw is... then I said screw it, this doesn't look so hard and I just did it... never found the link, but I'm sure it's there somewhere after page 3 where I gave up.

Google vs. Yahoo crawl frequency

[flinxmeister]

I've noticed that Yahoo's crawl visits my site more frequently...but Google's crawl seems to be intelligent about how often it crawls.

If I update alot, google crawls more. Yahoo doesn't seem to care.

So all these folks talking about yahoo being better may be off the mark. Why crawl all the time when you can only crawl when necessary?

Re:Great

[jalefkowit]

Have you actually tried Yahoo lately?

I've been finding that Yahoo's engine is as good at returning relevant results as Google, at least for my searches. In fact, in some cases it is even better at putting the most relevant hit in the first position [jasonlefkowitz.net] than Google is.

Of course, YMMV. But if you're still going off impressions of Yahoo Search you formed back in 1997, you might want to give their new-and-improved engine a spin sometime...

Re:Great...

[rm999]

Many products that are electronical or computer related return terrible results. I either get a bunch of technical pages or commercial pages. For example, the motherboard on a computer I was fixing was malfunctioning. I was looking for a manual. The manufacturer's site was not on the first site. Instead, I found several pages where I could buy the product.

I think an option in google that excludes sites with large data tables (technical sites) and prices (froogle sites) would be great. It would get me to pure information a lot quicker.

I've got Results as to why I prefer Google:

[Ralph Spoilsport]

OK: I did a brain fart search on both engines. The word? Kyzyl. It's the capital of Tuva. Tuva is an obscure little suburb of Mongolia. Yep. When you think your stupid relatives who bought a place in Indiana live in the middle of Nowhere, you're wrong. Tuva Is The Middle Of Nowhere.

So, In Firefox tab A, I have Google and tab B is Yahoo. Both searched on Kyzyl.

Results (pleae pay attention because htmling this was a pain...):

Yahoo's first 5 entries:

* All Russia Hotels All Russian Hotels - We offer discount hotel reservation services online in Moscow, St. Petersburg, Kiev, Russia, Ukraine, CIS and Baltic. www.allrussiahotels.com [allrussiahotels.com]

* Tuva Travel Kyzyl city is the capital of Tuva Republic (Russia) Kyzyl city is positioned right in the center of Asia, which is proudly claimed by a local monument specifically dedicated to this fact. www.sokoltours.com [sokoltours.com]

WEB RESULTS

1. Wikipedia: Kyzyl
Open this result in new window
Wikipedia Free Encyclopedia's article on 'Kyzyl' en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kyzyl [slashdot.org]

- More from this site - Save - Block

2. Weather Underground: Kyzyl, Russia Forecast
Open this result in new window Find the Weather for any City, State or ZIP Code, or Airport Code or Country. Email. Password. Maps. United States. International. Information. Refinance Rates. GoTo Meeting. Kyzyl Singles. Hosting Companies. Online deals! Vitamins. Internet Mall ... Updated: 8:00 AM KRAST on August 02, 2005. Observed at Kyzyl, Russia (History) Elevation: 2064 ft / 629 m ... Coming soon: Flash Stickers. Kyzyl, 63 F / 17 C ...
www.wunderground.com/global/stations/36096.html
- 64k - Cached - More from this site - Save - Block

3. AllRefer.com - Kyzyl (CIS And Baltic Political Geography) - Encyclopedia
Open this result in new window

3. AllRefer.com reference and encyclopedia resource provides complete information on Kyzyl, CIS And Baltic Political Geography. Includes related research links. ... By Alphabet : Encyclopedia A-Z - K. Kyzyl, CIS And Baltic Political Geography ... Kyzyl or Kizil[both: kizil'] Pronunciation Key, city (1989 pop ...
reference.allrefer.com/encyclopedia/K/Kyzyl [allrefer.com]
More from this site - Save - Block

Now, for the first five Google Results on Kyzyl:

Kyzyl'-administrative center of Republic of Tuva, Russia Kyzyl' Republic of Tuva,
|Central-Chernozemny| ... Republic Capital:, Kyzyl. Capital Population:, 91000( at 01/01/94) ...
members.tripod.com/~argun/kyzyl.htm [tripod.com]
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Kyzyl on Encyclopedia.com
Kyzyl or Kizilboth: kzl, city (1989 pop. 85000), capital of Tuva Republic, S Siberian Russia, on the Yenisei River. It services motor transport and has ...
www.encyclopedia.com/html/K/Kyzyl.asp [encyclopedia.com]
- 47k - Cached - Similar pages

Kyzyl Travel Information. Photos, Stories and Diaries about Kyzyl
Sustainable Tourism for independent travellers (travelers) and backpackers. www.worldsurface.com/browse/location.asp?locationi d=5654 [worldsurface.com]
- 59k - Cached - Similar pages

Kyzyl, Tuva, Russia current local time
Kyzyl, Tuva, Russia - before placing a telephone call or making travel plans for a flight or hotel, get the current local time provided by ...
www.worldtimeserver.com/current_time_in_RU-TY.aspx ?city=Kyzyl [worldtimeserver.com]
- 17k - C

Re:My own - albeit anecdotal - experience...

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah I have to agree with that. I recently tried Yahoo on a whim and the search results seem of higher or at least comparable quality. Now that they have way more pages indexed gives them an edge over Google. I think people may choose Yahoo over Google if they think Google may be missing pages since Yahoo has a bigger index.

Of course, without formal measurement search quality is subjective. IMO, Google is still better at finding specific things that have high visibility such as companies. If you search for a company in Google it almost always appears as the first result. Not the case with Yahoo.

Re:My own - albeit anecdotal - experience...

[xtracto]

Just FYI, here is a nice comparison [langreiter.com] of your search query between the two engines.

Re:fantastic

[baadger]

Results 1 - 20 of about 824,000 for ferrari. (0.08 seconds)

It varies. When I view it through Coral cache I get 461,000

Google still needs some tuning, though...

[Anonymous Coward]

http://bash.org/?514353 [bash.org]

Re:It's true, and easy to check...

[DavidD_CA]

Does this mean that the other 9,000,000,000 pages on the internet don't have the letter 'a' in them?

I tried searching for "a OR e OR i OR o OR u OR y" but actually got about 1/3 less results on each. How does that happen?