Are you kidding?!
There’s been a lot of conjecture and confusion today about Yahoo!’s commitment to being the world’s best search engine-talk which anyone who’s been following the evolution of Yahoo! Search would have realized is’ just plain wrong.
While some people immediately realized this, we thought it made sense to briefly recap how focused we are in search and our passion to be the world’s leading search engine:
(1) Less than two years ago we launched our own search engine. At the time nobody thought it could be done, but here we are. Whether it’s a single blogger switching to Yahoo!, or the results of a “Coke vs. Pepsi” challenge, it’s become clear that despite the “Google myth”, we’ve caught up and every day are improving search relevance and making search easier to use and more accessible for users.
(2) The people working on Yahoo! Search are some of the smartest you’ll find anywhere and are dedicated to the single purpose of building the world’s best search engine. Many of us have worked in search for more than a decade and invented much of the technology modern search engines are based on. In addition to the thousands of engineers and hundreds of PhDs, the list includes pioneers and experts like Andrei Broder, Prabhakar Ragavan, Jan Pedersen and Ricardo Baeza-Yates. They’re recognized technology leaders who live and breathe search. They all chose Yahoo! as the place where they can make their vision come true.
(3) We’re continuously innovating and finding new ways to help people connect to information and knowledge – part of our vision to help them find, use, share and expand all human knowledge. We’re working on literally hundreds of projects to improve search, and some of the most visible examples include My Web, Yahoo! Answers, and Open Shortcuts. We have also brought in some of the most innovative companies like Flickr and Delicious, to help bring the promise of social search and tagging to the rest of the world and advancing search beyond what it is today.
(4) Finally, we’ve turned Yahoo! Search into an open platform for innovative third-party developers — we’ve built the most comprehensive set of Web Services, allowing a new generation of applications to be built such as Rollyo and Eurekster and many others.
This commitment to being the best should be crystal clear from our investments in talented people, research, innovation and new products. Believe it or not, we are still in the early days of search. As all of us at Yahoo! agree, we’re in it for the long haul, and we’re in it to win.
Qi Lu, VP Engineering, Search
Eckart Walther, VP Products, Search
Then what’s up with the comment from Sue Decker? It just doesn’t seem to jive with this post? “It’s not our goal to be No. 1 in Internet search.” and “we’re in it to win” seem to be contradictory.
Seems to me that Sue Decker was quoted incorrectly. You know the media… The twist the tale to get focus, and unnecessary attention. In this case Yahoo is the scapegoat. No executive would make such a statement in public about the company they are part of. If she did make this statement in public she would probably be fired by now.
It’s all very well to want to be number 1, but you’ll struggle to reach such a goal when your results return nothing more than a list of spammy scraper sites for a week every time you reshuffle the index in an update!
What’s worse, is that these same sites are the ones that are built for nothing more than the display of Overture links, so it not only looks as though Yahoo has little concern for the purity of its index, and providing the best, most relevat results to users, it also indirectly profits from, and encourages the production of the kind of search engine spam that it is trying to eradicate.
A perfect example of the nondenial-denial.
We are glad you guys came out and corrected this, we were afraid that you had thrown in the towel. It’s not just about having the best quality search engine anyway, it’s about getting people to use it.
Look guys. Give them a break. Sue probably shoot off her mouth before thinking through it.
I seriously hope that Sue was dealt with after her comments. And btw, there isn’t a ‘Google Myth’. They have the better search at the moment and have for a while. The numbers who it themselves, not only within the United States but within other countries, they are literally kicking Y!s ass. The sooner you realize this the better off you will be.
Updating your search engine every month with other crap results won’t help anything. You need to actually get on it and start highering high profile men and women to help out. The older the younger generation gets the worse off Yahoo will get. Last time I checked, a ten year old doesn’t say ‘Go to Yahoo and find it’ they say ‘Go Google it!’. Plain and simple.
Still in denial about all of this? Go ‘Google it’ and see.
Oh and btw, sometimes a ‘one’ shows up on the left side of your blog below the navigation.
You should hire some good SEO professionals to consult with your PhD engineers. seorefugee.com is a good place to find some.
In the end, it comes down to Quality, and at this moment, Google has a cleaner more relevant service. Sue’s comment, I’m sure is not an official corporate motto, but one that the team there realizes is reality.
Until Yahoo returns to focusing on search results and relevancy, then Gooogle will continue to be #1, and Yahoo will start slipping. Slowly but surely, they’ll start slipping.
How can you be the best search engine when the link that you have setup to submit new sites doesn’t even work 99% of the time. Get a submission page working well, then let the rest of us know how interested you are in providing real results.
At least give Yahoo credit, they’re good at one thing: quickly delivering user search data to the government at the drop of a hat. Nice work!
I think Yahoo has more relevant results than Google. Search for ‘dog’ for instance. On Yahoo the number 1 ranked site is the American Kennel Club, a non-profit site that’s filled with information about dogs. On Google you get a couple of commerical site trying to sell you something before you get the AKC. Other searches will probably show the same thing.
Qi Lu & Eckart Walther,
Thanks for sharing your thoughts. Your accomplishments and your team are very impressive. Your commitment is obvious. It takes courage to publicly state that the CFO of your your company either hasn’t “been following the evolution of Yahoo! Search” or “is just plain wrong”.
Frankly, most of the innovations your staff is working on are out of my league. And, while a discussion on how to “expand all human knowlege is interesting”, my concern with Yahoo Search is considerably more more basic. I have written to Yahoo Site Exlorer and every other address I can find. On this blog, Tim assured me that he would turn my issue over to the quality team. No results. Would it be possible for one of your “recognized technology leaders who live and breathe search” to let me know why Yahoo doesn’t respect my 301s? The site is http://www.hill-country-visitor.com. My email is on this form.
Thank you and good luck on your mission.
It seems, Yahoo! does not really know what they want and how to compete.
obviously they are overorganized and not able to deliver any innovative products anymore especially international. in the whole blooging area there is not a real way to coop with Y!, because they do not have adsense, they do not have a site search submitt and even more worse, their whole multimedia search (audio, video) is crap.
I think the biggest challenge to Yahoo is MySpace, not Google. 50 million users…How can you compete with this phenomenon?
A Unified Theory of Search, Social Networking, Structured Blogging, RSS and the Active Web
http://billburnham.blogs.com/burnhamsbeat/2006/01/a_unified_theor.html
Yahoo and MSN are about the way Google was in early-mid 2002 – in terms of overall relevancy…
The only hope for Yahoo is not continuing to play ping pong with Back Link Algos, Title – Body Text etc…
Click popularity just does Not account for the non-level SERPs playing field and inherent inequities that exist.
New Intelligent Technology from the ground up has to be developed – There is only so far one can go with the current Algo variables – Engineers are just rehashing the same ideas with slight modifications – but no one – EVEN GOOGLE – is getting any relevant…
Yahoo and MSN and ASK have DRAMATICALLY improved in relevnce in the past year – only because Inktomi was so neglected…
But now – What else can be done – that has not already been tried????
The essential DNA of the Search Technology has to be reevaluated….
Google is just the relative best for most queries – but they too are not very relevant
In fact for some queries they are inferior to both Yahoo and MSN and ASK
Concept Searching , Latent Semantic Indexing, Extreme Advances in Processing and Retrieving technology are all posibilities as Search technology Evolves -
Mindset is a great idea potential – but what is being done with it…
AlltheWeb and Altavista are just being allowed to atrophy as inferior appendages to Yahoo..
THIS IS HORRIBLY WRONG!!!!!!!!!!!!!
THIS IS HORRIBLY WRONG!!!!!!!!!!!!!
THIS IS HORRIBLY WRONG!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Why not develop THEIR unique Algo individualities – to access what new strategies have the most Relevance-potential.
—-
Finally, please put the hyperlinks back into the ” Name” field on this Blog – so much valuable information is being given by these posters that the very least one could expect is an optional LINK
http://search-engines-web.com/
Why not call up the same reporter and have a correction issued?
It is cowardly of Y! Search to post this on a blog when real living breathing warm blooded reporters are calling to get answers.
I think overall Yahoo puts out a good portfolio of products and services. Google however has search and a few other crappy products. Yahoo search can be easily manipulated but there has been improvement. What I am interested in seeing is what they are doing with this current update. I also ask how come Yahoo is not more open to people in the search community, personally I have had tons of ideas and never can reach anyone at Yahoo. When is Yahoo going to open up and bring in people to compliment their engineers.
Yahoo in its current form will not take over Google in search. I don’t care if god himself comes down and tells you how to create the perfect search engine. The point is there is no perfect search engine. Somebody in a earlier post mentioned that Yahoo search is more relevant than Google because the term ‘dog’ returns some website instead of some other website. Who’s to say your opinion of a good search result is the same as somebody elses?
My point is this. Yahoo needs to first implement search algorithms that work at least to the level of google (if it’s not broken, why fix it right?) . Then innovate, but under a different name. Start a subsidiary or something. Hire a 20 yr old as your chief strategist for example. Do to google what google did to you. Come in fresh, bullshit about your corporate culture, come up with some idiot friendly moto about not doing evil, etc.
The other side of the coin is that google has invented the end of the line for search, basically the wheel. Maybe their search has reached maximum utility for the consumer profile and while other companies are running around trying to tag this or that to death, google is slaughtering everybody with trageted advertising. Maybe the revolution for search is not search at all.
As a long time former Yahoo! insider, I can’t believe that Yahoo! is going to roll over and die any time soon. The reality is Yahoo! faces some real challenges in creating a platform/portal that really works together as a cohesive whole rather than a bunch of sites and features that function indepently from one another. Part of the reason for this is due to the fact of how the company is structured where different business units act like fiefdoms and march to their own drummers. Web 2.0 is about collaboration between different web based services. The new Yahoo! should reflect that.
In order for Yahoo! to beat Google, Yahoo! has to realize that less is more and a strong unifying vision (no more marketing speak!) is necessary to rally the troops and mobilize the company.
My heart breaks when I’ve been watching Yahoo! from the outside over the last two years being systematically overtaken by Google and not seeing them able to respond.
I’m glad you posted something about this. It was really disturbing to hear you “gave up”.
Yahoo will never be the ultimate search engine. It is is a hodge-podge of what’s old in internet technology. The primary focus of Yahoo is not how to improve the search engine, but rather, how to place as many advertisements on a page as possible.
Yahoo Search = Inferior.
Yahoo rocks! I can’t wait for the release of the new Yahoo! mail.
Yahoo is gay unless you love getting pop-ups while you search. The reason you know google is bigger and better: It’s a household word. The word Google is actually used as a verb now. Once that happens you know you’re big.
Plus the search is programmed different on Google than on Yahoo. On Yahoo you pay for your spot (making it easy to monopolize); on Google the search is based on relevance to the topic. For instance, if you search the word “photography,” the web sites that have the highest rating have the most web sites linking back to them.
um…ok…suure you’re the best search engine yahoo…. sure you are.
** pats yahoo on the head and tells it to go out and play **
http://digg.com/technology/Yahoo_Responds_to_Controversy_about_Not_Being_1_-_Wrong_Wrong_Wrong
This Blog Thread is now on the Front Page of Digg
with some very interesting comments
Let’s not forget something else Yahoo has made a habit of doing: cancelling people’s Yahoo accounts for no reason and offering no explanation or path of recourse. Two months ago, Yahoo suspended my account because of alleged “ToS violations.” How did I know that? Because I spend 8 days on the phone calling Yahoo to find out why. It’s not as if Yahoo actually told me, despite the fact that I’ve had the same Yahoo user name since 1997.
So, now I can’t access my 800+member Yahoo group, Yahoo mail is basically gone. Had letters in there I’d saved almost a decade for personal reasons. Figured they’d be safer there where drives are backed up. I was right, Yahoo mail survived 2 hard drive crashes over the years, and then — oops — hey you’re canceled. (Their ToS is nice and scary, go ahead and read it. They can delete all of your stuff for no good reason and there’s nothing you can do about it.)
Finally, I was emailed a note saying I was violating Geocities policy because my Geocities webpage (I formerly hosted there when I didn’t know crap about web hosting and thought Yahoo hosting was a grand idea) had a forwarding link on it. I cleaned out my Geocities page because it was inaccessible way too often (another server crash!?) and put a link on the former fromt page saying “I moved here. Click the link to visit me.” And then I didn’t touch ANYTHING again for 3 years.
Is it worth putting so much information into a company that, according to their own ToS, can cancel you, won’t tell you why, bullies you hoping you’ll give up, and then relents with a NASTY letter about how I’m ruining the internet because of my link away from Yahoo. I will never trust Yahoo with anything important ever again.
/rant
PS Hey there’s even a nasty ToS warning at the bottom of this page. Nice touch, Yahoo.
Why would I want to use a search engine that turns their logs to the government without a fight? You have a history of betraying your users to the local goverment. I find that highly objectionable. I will never use the Yahoo search engine, no matter how good it may be. You have picked sides and you picked the wrong one. You are yahoos, and not in a good way.
“Please do not post any private information unless you want it to be available publicly and never assume that you are completely anonymous and cannot be identified by your comments.”
I wonder how come they don’t think this is true for what we search for on Yahoo?
Yahoo is clearly a winner in consistent, user-friendly service. Google is a huge scam people, but most are too brainwashed to see this.
Case in point:
As a web professional its my job to observe Googles indexing methods to see what they return for results. For a site I know should have no more than 300K pages, Google returns 3.9 MILLION. for one that has 128K or so, google returns 2.4 MILLION. Depending on the day and time, Google’s index is completely fragmented clearly erroneous.
Why do people buy into it? Why do people buy into anything? Marketing. The “Beta” concept, the “Do No Evil”, the cute (but ultimately useless) products they continue to put out. It’s all part of a big show.
Meanwhile, Yahoo keeps up with the real deal. Everything from travel to price comparisons, a rock solid email service since day 1, unlike Googles Gmail which apparently has buggy send/receive issues.
Don’t believe the hype. Yahoo is a clear, professional company that delivers consistent quality over the years. They’ll be here a long time after Googles homepage starts sporting the “powered by MSN Search!” button.
Yahoo will pull themselves out of this hole by reinventing search and using the small statistical relevency based on small known communities (weighting relevency by only their trusted members) and introducing these weightings into the overall search equation and algorithm. They are already assembling the pieces. Flickr, Delicious, Upcoming.org, Blu-Ray.
Only two pieces left, Digg and TiVo.
Stanley Wong says he’s a former Yahoo! insider and cites the inability to tie the various fiefdoms together at Yahoo!. I’m not an insider and have no real sense of how the place is run but this may in fact be accurate — I wouldn’t find it surprising. If they can get the right corporate visionary in place to tie all of these properties together and take authority over the various fiefdoms then they will once again begin to take market share back from Google.
Ask.com tried to position human knowledge as superior to AI but what they missed was the power of small communities. Small communities will have tremendous implications for relevancy in search. To guard against most though will be the manipulation of these small communities in what is going to be an increasingly profitable game. This will be done by using weightings and qualifications within these communities of only the known and trusted members. Trusted members will be defined by consistent activity and good behavior or known sponsorship by other trusted group members. In order to be relevent you will need to be trusted but this is going to create massive advances in search.
Irrespective of Sue Decker’s unfortunate commments, most likely misquoted with excessive literary license taken by a writer and later the “blathering” in the blogosphere that Caterina Fake also wrote of, Yahoo! knows exactly what they are doing.
…or more correctly WebJay… I’ve got to get my mind off of HD-DVD vs. Blue Ray
sounds kind of whiny
No matter what the truth was, this little snippet of news offered me a bit of humor. Yahoo! is led by people I find abhorrent: small-minded people who are getting wealthy by compromising their characters.
>>There’s been a lot of conjecture and confusion today about Yahoo!’s commitment to being the world’s best search engine-talk which anyone who’s been following the evolution of Yahoo! Search would have realized is just plain wrong.
>>While some people immediately realized this, we thought it made sense to briefly recap how focused we are in search and our passion to be the world’s leading search engine.
Recap on focus ?! To who? Shouldn’t this be directed to Sue Decker, rather than trying to cover it up? May be, she found the lack of focus that you say that exists and didn’t get a chance to talk to the people you’ve, allllllll this time !!!!
You named this article “Are you kidding”, sure enuf.
Last time I used Yahoo for search was when I was first discovering the Internet, back in 1996-1997. Of course, those were the days when we all thought Netscape Navigator and ICQ were the shit too. If I want directory-style search, I now go to DMOZ. If I want relevant search, I go to Google. Yahoo canceled an groups/email acct I had for a TOS Violation (no idea what) after almost a decade of service. Plus they agree with gov’t requests by Republicans, and I can’t stand those dudes. Only thing I use Yahoo for now is games (Literati and Graffitti).
True, everyone jumped the gun. I’ve to say, Yahoo has consolidated well in the past year. I am a Google regular but for image search, it is Yahoo. Ofcourse flickr and Delicious are adding big value to you. It is nice to see some good competition in the web services space with everyone playing catch up. Nobody wants an one-dimensional world. So, play on!
Great Title “Are you kidding.”
Its good to see that Yahoo is willing and able to compete with Google.
On my blog Really (search baleta) Yahoo is only 5% of Search Hits. I can’t work out how Yahoo is doing its rankings. I got a feeling that the paid rankings is doing Yahoo a disservice in terms of people finding what they are looking for and in the end that is what is going to determine the majority of users.
Whats the story of blocking blogger users from posting urls in the comments. That doesnt seem fair.
When internet users and others are saying you’ve “given up” you should just take it and use it to better what you have to offer and just get the job done instead of wasting time trying to “prove” that you’ve done something worth while.
This blog just sounded like a desperate attempt to stay in the battle.
Whether you’ve created other programs that have had the ultimate success or not, it’s plain to see that Google is on top right now and will be for as long as it takes for something even better to come around. Whether this will ever happen… who knows. No search will ever be perfected. In one way or another, there will always be someone out there to complain.
Yahoo needs to regain their composure and just continue doing what they’re doing and just suck it up.
I am currently a big user of Google AND Flickr. I use what programs work for me as i’m sure most of you bloggers do as well. That is how it will always work.
I wish all programmers the best of luck and await the technologies of tomorrow with hopes that they will make life easier, bring the world closer together and not invade our privacy in a way that will turn people against the internet or technology all together.
Ohhhhh, I had no idea you guys were the best search engine! Well, in that case, I will uninstall my Google toolbar and use Yahoo forever more. I’m so glad Yahoo is around to tell me how good Yahoo is.
Pfft. Google rules you.
Whatever people think, I’m awarding you 5 gold stars for transparency / allowing comments on this Yahoo! blog.
Onwards is upwards.
c.
How come we have not heard any replies from Yahoo. I know alot of what is being said here is the same thing, but if Yahoo had a more open communication with SEO’s it would help more. Google acts like they do but I really dont trust them at all, any dude who worked for the defense department is shady to me.
The posters comment that we are in the early days of search are spot on. Frankly all of the current search engines are crap and until they gain a semantic understanding of the users sense of the word delivering individual relevance there wont be any meaningful changes in the search market. So who cares if Yahoo or Google is number one now because the first company that includes the users semantic space in the equation wins. And good luck in solving that one Yahoo/Google without stepping all over protected IP.
So many people are complaining that yahoo gave up their search data to the gov. Could these hopeless souls explain how their security was compromised when
1) The data given was anon.
2) Being obvious case of stupid google fan boys they hardly use Yahoo.
I also wonder how can people trust Google an (evil corporate) with their search data but not the Government. Morons.
It seems obvious that Google is evil. Nice PR stunt pulled by them, by not giving anonymous data to the government. I am sure they will ultimately give the data.
Those who complain about account deactivation. Well if for 45 days you do not access your gmail account – it is gone for ever. With Yahoo it even a free account stays for 3 months. I feel my account is safer with Yahoo.
I used to be full time google user, but once I tried Yahoo I never turned back to google – simply because apart from yahoo search being on par with google’s, Yahoo offers so much more.
“There’s been a lot of conjecture and confusion today about Yahoo!’s commitment to being the world’s best search engine-talk which anyone who’s been following the evolution of Yahoo! Search would have realized is just plain wrong.”
…are you kidding me? You sell placement in your engine and call this commitment?
Well, with this latest google China fiasco I’d say Yahoo could make some headway. I used to use yahoo all the time, then Google became a habit. I know quiote a few people who are boycotting Google because of the China policy. The only real places to go are Yahoo and Msn. It’s possible the number 1 spot may not be that elusive after all.
The reason the Google blog doesn’t allow comments is because they don’t want people posting the fact that each one of their new endedavors has already been done by one of their competitors.
I was thinking about this today, its quite possible that engineers are an important part in the development of a search engine, but the actual quality of the engine depends on the satisfcation the users receive from using it. The best way to provide good results may not be just through programming and usability, I feel you need to some of the box thinking. Bring in some people who can give a different creative view. I personally would love to do that, may for Yahoo or a new search engine.
I love, everything about Yahoo from entertainment to news and TV listing BUT the search engine dilemma is driving me nuts. I am working on the premise there was another update so I went to yahoo search put in my main key word for my site …the results – mostly yahoo groups front page (that’s okay) but two unrelated sites on the front page then second page on #12 – a website that isn’t a site, its a page with the keyword in its title, a site without any text, without any working graphics, no content whatsoever no links to other pages because they don’t exist and when I checked the archive information as directed by the Yahoo cache (yes the site was cached looking like this – honestly its not a site)
I digress ~ the archived information states no new pages no page requests since May 2005. How can that site or page without any text, content, graphics nothing but an aqua background be the #12 most relevant site using the keyword WAHM. I don’t know.
Well, on the bright side…
Your number one in my book, when it comes to Search Spam.
Your the best,
Please fire Sue Becker. She has betrayed all of the people who has worked their butts off for Yahoo! search. Her ill-advised comment reflects that she does not belong in a leadership position. If she stays on, she will affect the morale of your search team.
I hate monopolies and hope that someone will take away market shares from Google, and soon please!!!
Today. I use both yahoo and google depending on which is fastest to get to. I am yet to notice any difference in the relevancy between google and yahoo, which makes me think you could spend hundreds of millions on algorithm, and the average joe (or jack :-)) wouldn’t notice a thing. why is google ahead and yahoo behind? brand. aside from being household name for search, people speak of google as if the company exists for charity or with a mission to make the world a better place.
now, here is what I think about the two, since we’re comparing.
Google:
- they got an army of really smart engineers, they’re spending like crazy. same time, very little strategy, business savy, focus.
- they’re growing more and more arrogant everyday, businesses big and small are noticing that as they get their toes stepped on, users will soon enough start seeing that, and realize ‘dont be evil’ is just exactly what they’re google is good at, lipservice.
- until today, they’re unable to follow through with solid products. they have nothing but a bunch of beta products that seem to stay in beta forever. as if, they’re scrambling to build products half-way and move on to the next thing
yahoo:
- balanced company, with very wide range of solid services and products
- mature, responsible company which is obvious in how their products are released and level of follow through on its investments
- if tomorrow, breakthrough alternative to today’s search is introduced, google would be in deep shxx. yahoo would still be in good shape as far as user base and reach is.
- yahoo’s problem is brand, I don’t think people relate yahoo to search
- yahoo is probably slower than google. it seems that google is more nimble as far as organization and company structure is considered.
I’d hope yahoo focus on radically improving search **experience** instead of merely spending on technology that does more or less same thing.
as for google, continue throwing darts all over the place in quest of next big thing and see what sticks, and try to keep a leash on your arrogance otherwise you will continue stepping on more toes and surround yourself with a lot of enemies (MS anyone?), which will drive you off the cliff. more importantly, cross your fingers and hope that investors don’t wake up and start dumping your stock.
Competition is good… I still prefer Google but, any competition will sure improve situation :)
I have confidence that yahoo will gain some ground in 06. You guys have definitely made some smart aquisitions in the past couple of months.
Seems that Yahoo is saying they are in it to win. That is the American way, don’t ya think. Otherwise they would stop innovating – stop expanding their borders.
Be in it to win.
What turns me away from Yahoo? The search results relevance. A couple people earlier touhed on it actually – that Yahoo favors, Yahoo Groups, Yahoo profiles/360, and similar yahoo services before other results.
Also, that stupid Yahoo commercials on TV drove me nuts. Yes – it got my attention, and no I don’t want to be associated with a bunch of Yahoo’s. I’m not redneck and I don’t want to be thought of as such.
Brand is everything. Ill stick with Google, thanks.
p.s. …and this blog sucks, getting 500 errors and strange replies when trying to post. Now I understand why I’m seeing the double entries in this blog.
I personally find yahoo to be great. I personally find google to be too based on PR and links, which causes bad search results in some cases. A perfect example is look up “New Jersey web design” the New York Giants came up for the top 10 for 1 month straight. Its finnally down to 35ish.
Keep up the good work yahoo.
Qi Lu & Eckart Walther,
You created this entry. You opened it by stating that Yahoo has caught up with Google in search relevance. My claim (see post above) is that you can’t or won’t remove urls that have not existed for several years from your index, even though they have valid 301 redirects.
So, with all due respect, I challenge your claim that you have caught up with Google. On this blog, Jeremy understandably becomes “exasperated’ with Yahoo users and customers when they don’t provide specifics. Can you plese provide specifics on how you’ve caught up with Google? Otherwise, I’ll be forced to believe the posters above. Thanks.
Regarding your statement:
“We’re working on literally hundreds of projects to improve search, and some of the most visible examples include . . . Yahoo! Answers,”"
It may not be the most important part of the discussion, but it’s worth considering how unwise it is to point to a “function” that is so widely regarded as being frustratingly disfunctional as you did here.
OK, you may be in the game against Google. I’m not arguing that. But it’s just asking for trouble when one uses, as examples of success, functions that are such amazingly annoying wastes of time that most experienced web us don’t even attempt to use them any longer.
Hey, The problem with Yahoo! is that it’s not consistent like Google or should I say Google is more consistent in throwing up relevant results than Yahoo! But have seen marked improvement in Yahoo! in the last 2 years.
I am glad Yahoo has not thrown in the towel but I do wonder on their motives. Just do any search on yahoo and the pages is cluttered with ads. Google wins because its interface and results are cleaner. As recent studies have shown within 20 nanoseconds a user can decide if its a website/page they like to look at or not.
Right now Yahoo Search falls in the NOT category..
AMF from the GMF
Google’s interface is EQUALLY cluttered if not more. They show the same number of ads that Yahoo search does. Compare
http://search.yahoo.com/search?p=grad+school
http://www.google.com/search?q=grad+school
Same amount of crap.
For almost all searches that I have executed on both, I have noticed Google clutter is as bad/good (whatever you choose) as Yahoo clutter.
Want to improve your search? Listen to and respond to feedback from Webmasters once in a while – they might be able to help.
I’d welcome a real Google competitor but you’re not even close in terms of index quality and responsiveness to the people providing the content for you to index in the first place.
The main page says it all … Yahoo trys to do everything … you can’t do one great thing if you are attempting to do/offer everything!!
I can’t even find the search dialog …
Let’s just take the comments at face value and treat them as a sobering reality check. The words remind me of Jobs’ prophetic statement years ago that “in order for Apple to succeed, it’s not necessary for Microsoft to fail.” Yahoo and Google are both amazing organizations. It’s a marathon, not a sprint.
Jay, in the example you cite, Google’s page is definitely less busy.
Oh yes, you are soo good. Tell that to the Chinese journalisy who is now rotting in a Chinese jail because you betrayed him. And when our government as for your logs you just bend over and deliver. Yahoo sucks! You care not about your customers but about expediency.
Honestly Google is much more easier to navigate, and I cannot stand the stupid search results I manage to get with Yahoo.
Google gets me what I want,with yahoo, I have to graze through the search results.
I believe yahoo sucks and google sucks. When searching directly for a certain compamy or product the relevance that I am seeing is being placed on directories and blogs.
If I had wanted a directory or blog I would have put this in the search bar.
Now why on earth would I wish to sift through a whole bunch of garbage advertising to get to where I want to be or continue to look past page 3 to find the real McCoy.
Personally I have had it with both yahoo and google as times are constantly changing. Unfortunately yahoo and google in my opinion are not changing for the better but are seriously getting worse.
I remember a time when RC Cola and Shlitz malt liquor were at the top of their game. Now they are almost unheard of unless your looking for antique paraphernalia.
In my opinion yahoo and google are now the worst in the industry as far as search results. Try your same search on MSN and you will be surprised at the difference between them. MSN in my opinion is setting theirself apart with more accurate search results while yahoo and google continue to languish. As many new search engines are popping up there is only room for one at the top.
Now I think I will have a Pepsi cola or Budweiser beer while I ponder more thoughts.
Quite a lot of these posts are slating Yahoo – but just ask yourself how much bandwidth Google Adsense eats up. I can tell you now that on a 1 meg connection, with a firewall then a proxy then another firewall behind the proxy on which the client computers reside – it is quite a significant amount. I used Dansguardian and squid and blocked all the adsense from googlesyndication and adsense2.googlesyndication.com. ALL internet pages loaded 1000 percent faster and I don’t just mean those which have adsense material on them – I mean ALL. The fact is that Google is the worst spammer of bandwidth on the net
WAKE UP AND SMELL WHAT’s ON THE END OF YOUR SHOVEL !!!!
when i search yahoo, i can’t find what i’m looking for, I use google more than phone book, because if type thousand oaks ca plumber, I find more plumbers in thousand oaks ca on the first search with google, than I do yahoo, so google’s got my business- I will say, I like yahoo homepage cause it’s got alot news and gossip, but it is distracting, so as business person trying to keep the people in my office on track, again I preach google and its pure clean format-
Maybe i’m biased, i do own alot of google stock!
When I do any type of search now on Yahoo, I get business crap for pages and pages. That is Yahoo’s relevence scale, business first. I want to make a search for a subject and actually find pages on the topic I searched for. Google is much better at this point, but not much.
For instance, say I do a search on “Boats in Dallss Texas”, probably 80% of the links returned will be from boat companies located anywhere but Dallas. So I have to read through 3000 link descriptions before I find one in Dallas.
Time for a new relevent search engine, one that does not privide free email just to get hits and cram ads down your throat.