"Vanessa Fox Fishkin"? Really? Yahoo!, you've gone too far this time. Search engines should find things for you, not put you in the doghouse with your new fiancée.
On a serious note, though, I have to say that I'm more than a little impressed with Yahoo!'s algorithmic upgrades. Their search results rival, and in some cases, exceed the quality I get at Google. Visiting with Si in New Jersey over the weekend, he commented that he barely visits Google anymore, since Yahoo! is his homepage and he now gets a satisfactory search result almost every time with them. I'm trying to convince Si to start commenting on the blog, despite his shy nature (at least, on the web).
UPDATE - Yahoo! kindly apologized.
Wow at first I wanted to chime in and be like Yahoo couldn’t lick my shorts if my Google was on fire. Whatever that means…
However before I did I chucked a few choice terms at Yahoo and Vandam those aren’t bad results, much better.
I'm still not sure how I feel about it, I mean Yahoo is kind of like my ex-girlfriend of search, I used to care but I've moved on. Seeing good results on Yahoo is like really like seeing your ex at a party looking great and dating one of your friends. I'm happy for them, and it's good to see they are doing well, but I've moved on.
Also Y! doesn’t work as well with all the cool Firefox SEO tools I love to play with.
But are you married to Google? In a committed relationship?
Search engines are fickle, you never know when they might turn on you, find someone else to move to the top of their list, be their "number 1."
So until then, I think it is wise to keep an open mind and play the field.
Well we may sleep in different beds every now and then, but I'm not exactly spending my friday nights optimizing for Yahoo.
P.S. I'm loving this whole I'm doing it with the search engines tone, I could keep this comment going on forever.
Yeah, but check out those Vanessa Fox clones! :)
Rand, tell the truth, around the time you were preparing for the Super Proposal, you started a secret SEO campaign aimed at Vanessa in case Mystery Guest didn't say yes. Gratned it would be genius and awesome, because how many people of two animals as part of their name? Well, I guess Native Americans do, but the Fox-Fish would be cool. You'd have the most optimized babies ever, they'd take over the world. Good thing Mystery Guest said yes!
Yahoo's got me hooked with their Fantasy Sports. They have to be my homepage...
yeah it is the main use I have for Yahoo too....
I think Yahoo is just trying to get Vanessa Fox in trouble with all the major SEO players.... everyone starts distancing themselves from Google and Yahoo benefits.
Also I wouldn't let Danny see those results!
I like the goolge approach of "less in more"....Yahoo was always too busy for me. I know what I'm looking for, don't distract me with other junk.
And I'm really not a fan of the Yahoo sponsored results...they get in the way. I personally NEVER click through a paid ad so that space is useless to me.
Ahhh Geraldine...you made me curious, so I Yahoo'd "Kim Berg" and got back all the Kim Berg's on the planet, but not me. So I had to add my EX-husband's name to it - "Kim Krause Berg", and suddenly, I own the SERPs page.
Lessons learned?
1. I am not a Fishkin.
2. I am not just married to Eric. I am a confusing mess.
3. If you make a name for yourself with one name, you're stuck with it. (Which is the other reason I kept "Krause" and made that my new middle name. Plus, my kids asked me to keep it, since it is their last name.)
4. Make Rand change his name for you.
heh
I'd LOVE to see more from Si. Hi Si!!
See? And here I thought your last name was "Krausberg".
And yeah, I'm so not changing my name. Not even an issue, really.
It would be nice to see Yahoo coming back into the search game.
Interestingly, they've now become third most used search tool in the UK, after Google search and Google image search.
Google
Google Image Search
Yahoo
MSN
Ask.com
I can imagine the doghouse. Now you just have to make sure she's not up all hours of the night searching for an old post where you professed your undying love for Vanessa Fox.
As far as Yahoo goes, I do use the search at times from my search box in Firefox. Yet, I'm too happy with my personalized Google homepage to move anywhere I think.
I do think I'll set Yahoo as the default engine in my Firefox search box to give it a test though.
Caught in the middle with vanessa fox on either side. Looks like March will be coming in like a lion ;)
I've never been one to count Yahoo! out yet. Let's face it, the switching costs online for search engines/portals is about as low as you can go. There is little to nothing invested on the part of a user. Look how many people in this post alone have, if only temporarily, changed their home page to Yahoo!.
Tides can turn so fast online it makes your head spin. Interestingly, I had had myYahoo as my home page for years, but over the last year, moved to the FireFox/Google page when I switched my primary browser from IE to FF. I was getting tired of all the invasive banners ads along the top of the myYahoo page. This was one where they really shot themselves in the foot.
I also notice that my RSS feeds don't always seem to update all that timely. I often pop over to that page though to come into SEOmoz... I know it is just as easy to type in the URL, especially with the browser history, but it gives me a quick once over on the other feeds and content that I have there and it is easier to click twice than type.
They were also irritating me with the arrangement of myYahoo page... it was cool that you could simply drag and drop a module, but then it kept going back to the way it was... people make a move when they get frustrated, and it is often over things that are indirectly related.
I still don't agree that Yahoo's results are better. Do a search for Las Vegas golf and you'll see about.com listed twice in the top 5 searches. In most 'specific keyword searches", Google still remains supreme. Do a search for golf las vegas and you see the same thing.
Do the same search on google and you get what you want - golf in las vegas rather than some site that is talking about golf in las vegas. I dont' want to learn about it, I want to buy it. Almost any search you do with golf and las vegas, about.com shows up twice in the top 5. Whereas on google they randomize depending on the actual keyword. I did a more specific search "las vegas golf courses" on Yahoo you get about.com on Google you actually get Golf Courses in Las Vegas.
more relavant? I think not. MyYahoo searches have dropped down to below 17% vs MSN at 24% - not sure where you guys are seeing a rise, but it's all been downhill on Yahoo on all my sites, and Google and MSN rising higher in numbers.
Regarding the cialis search above - well of course it looks like Yahoo took care of the spam it's listed cialis.com 3 times in the top 10 - so there's no room for the bad stuff which is on page 2 2nd listing. Take the redundant listings off and you'll have what you have on google.
I think its great that Yahoo! is getting better, but the amount of traffic that it sends is pitiful. I have Yahoo! as my home page and use it exclusively for sports, movies, etc. but less than 1% of my traffic comes from them. Until they regain some market share of search traffic, or at least more towards my way I'm going to continue to focus primarily on Google.
sonicko - for the few dozen sites whose stats we have access to, I've never seen Yahoo! at less than 10% of search market share. 1% sounds to me like they might be having a problem with your site.
Under 10% market share? Think outside the box States :)
The most recent stats from Hitwise show Yahoo has under 10% market share of total searches conducted in Australia & the UK.
On the other hand, I believe Asian countries like Japan, Taiwan, Hong Kong, would be dominated by Yahoo search.
edit: dammit, can't get the strikeout button to work!
Shor,
Totally agree with you.
I'm based in Asia and know that most locals do use Yahoo a lot (mostly personal searches and have it has their homepage). They also prefer to use Yahoo's auction site over eBay's.
And then you've also got Baidu which is the leading search engine in China.
Hi Rand,
I should be fair in saying that my site is primarily based upon Google Analytics, but we manage quite a few Google Analytics accounts and the amount of organic SE traffic from Yahoo is typically under 10% across the board. I dunno if I'm just having bad luck, but having good content, on page optimization, and even being in the Yahoo directory has brought us nothing but bad results. I'll be in Seattle in a week or two visiting Pop (dunno if you've heard about them) but if I have time I'll have to buy your office lunch for the quality content that you put forth on here.
Jeff
My site shows less than 5% when I look in AWStats on cPanel, but when I go to Analytics it's totally different showing about 20%. What stat software are you using?
Do a search for "Cialis" in Google, Yahoo & MSN. Only Yahoo has kept the spam out of the top 10. I have to say that I'm impressed. Now, if they would just index faster...
ahhh the search engines hold the key to lots of secrets now dont they...
Hmm... this is the best algo of yahoo..:)
Rand - have you spotted Yahoo's apology yet?
Just saw that - thanks Dave!
*teeheehee* saw that myself.
And so the incriminating evidence of Rand and Vanessa all cozy and close is brough to all our attention *giggles*
Oh Rand... https://www.flickr.com/photos/toprank/315219834/
not the sincerest of apologies though ;)
I fetched this from https://uniworld1.tripod.com/behind.html which is not exactly an authority site - it just talks about their symbols.
"Long has the olive branch been taken as a symbol of peace. It began with the myth of the ancient Greek goddess Athena, who in a contest over patronage of the city of Athens against Poseidon, struck the soil with her spear and brought up an olive tree as a gift to the city's residents. Athena won the people's heart with this gift, and since then the olive branch has been regarded as a symbol of peace and plenty."
I'm sure that it was meant in that respect... as opposed to virility *grins* *winks*
Rand: after seeing the first post and the apology...it appears your proposal is taking on epic proportions in the search world.
Maybe a searchengine can pick it up as link/traffic bait!
I have to agree, Yahoo! is getting better, especially the last two updates where in the right direction. Let's see if there is any movemnt in the next few days (it's about time for a weather report plus I am seeing a bit of movement in Y! siteexplorer)
Funny post!
On a serious side, I think that Y! has good stuff - I think its the fact that they have more PPC results on the page. I can argue that the PPC ads are well-targeted + easier to read. At the end of the day, they are good results, sometimes beating out G & Y's natural search.
Just my 2 cents.
I do agree that their relevancy has improved but must also admit a small degree of annoyance at seeing 4 sponsor results on some commercial searches. On machines set to 1024x768, these take up half of the left side of screen and only leave slightly less than two organic results showing above the fold.
Interesting post. Recently I have had similar observations...that Yahoo's search results were more relevant in many cases, and getting better all the time. I've been slowly moving my search frequency from Goolge:90%/Yahoo:10% to Google:50%/Yahoo:50%. It would be good for Google to have a challenger once again, as maybe they will work harder to improve their algorithms.
I almost suspect that Yahoo's current relevance success is in part because the spammers aren't concentrating on them. I think if Yahoo regains prominence we'll have the same problems as we do with Google; the black hat/spammers will go where the traffic is.
Whether Yahoo can be as successful (or more successful) in dealing with it is another question. I know from an SEO perspective it seems far easier to get in the top 5 on Yahoo than it does on Google. Is this because of algorithmic differences or simply lack of competition?
I don't like Yahoo!'s annoying banners. It is much easier to ignore a quiet text ad. That, and my RSS feeds do not update on time.
At least we know she'll hyphenate her last name so those of us who have been waiting for the event know how to get the gifts engraved*winks*I like Yahoo and I'm a big underdog supporter so do use Ask.com and have gotten the office to use it a little more and got them invited to our search engine marketing conference. Mind, I have a yahoo email account and check the news a lot (working for a news site...) so Yahoo! has got to be the first choice - much better for news + email alerts + gossip than Google
I'm guessing you are talking about the news type email alerts for search phrases?
Interesting as I actually found that I was getting more "garbage" on comparable email alerts through Yahoo! than Google alerts which has rarely sent me an unrelated alert... perhaps I need to give Y another chance.
sorry I meant the news on the front page when I leave my browser on https://uk.yahoo.com - I enjoy the news, my email alerts and the like. Just my personal preference
The question nobody's asking: WHY was MysteryGuest Yahoo-ing Vanessa Fox? :) Is she doing some background research on her biggest competitors? :)
Maybe she got concerned after that picture of Vanessa laying down with her head on DaveN's shoulder in the London comic ;)
Interesting. I'm actually migrating over to Yahoo! too. My reasons are simple - I like a nice UI, and I like everything I want in one place.
Google works because it's SO simple if all you want is a search engine. And for a a very long time, that's been all people have wanted. The reason why it still continues to dominate is simply because people only go there for a few seconds.
But if you want to actually have a site that displays information on the news, and gives you other interesting links to check out, (essentially an inspiration portal - you go to find things that make you go "that looks interesting... *clickity*"), you just can't beat Yahoo!.
For me, they're like a Porche 911. Yes, it's taken them 40 years to make the car good, but my God is it a good car. And yet it's never managed to replace Ferrari as "The Daddy".
It's taken Yahoo! a long time to build a great portal, with top quality search. But it really is rather good these days. And yet they're not managing to replace Google.
The question is though, if more people start viewing Yahoo! as a search engine, rather than just a portal, wouldit nuke Google?
Food for thought...
Oh, and come on down Si! You know you want to! Teach us oh great one! :)
Seriously, it'd be great to have some posts from you.
I wonder if what brought Google to power is what begins to undermine them: simplicity?
Precisely what I'm wondering.
The other thing is things like Personal Google Homepage doobrywhatsits are cool, but google hasn't given it a good UI, so I don't use it. It looks clunky and ugly. Sure, it works. But I want it to work and look good.
When I do my researching on the web now, I also start with Yahoo! first and Google second and maybe MSN as a third stop if I don't find enough of what I'm looking for.
Partially because I know many of the companies I'm researching have horrible SEO on their corporate websites and would show up as the 1M th result in the Google results but come up quite high in Yahoo!
I think Yahoo's been giving good results for awhile now. I still go to Google first, because when I search I like the simpler interface. Yahoo though has been my home page for years in part because they let me customize the look of the page and not just the content.
Google if you're listening let me customize the colors of my personalized page if you want it to be my home page.
Rand, Yahoo apology or not you may need to spend a little more time at home for awhile. You have been on the road a lot lately.
Yahoo is streets ahead of MSN at the moment and traffic from them is rising all the time.
I could not imagine a day that I preferred Yahoo over Google.
Its like using Windows over a Mac - yes its there, but why bother?