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What Can Yahoo Do To Compete with Google?
ryanjensen writes "Jay Currie over at Tech Central Station has an article up about Yahoo's pending entrance into the AdSense advertising market, and outlines some things Yahoo (and MSN for that matter) can do to compete, including: Paypal payouts, revenue share transparency, rewarding quality (but small) publishers, and offering an alternative to "keyword bids" for advertisers." It should be noted that Yahoo has already been fighting Google on this front - Overture, owned by Yahoo!, has been running an Ad-Sense like program for a while.
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Clean up its portal or offer a simple search site without any excessive links.
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Quit tracking every damn thing I do on their site
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Stop sending me specific advertisements based on where I go instead of what I search
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Quit favoring select commercial companys in Yahoo! Mail to bypass the "Bulk folder".
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Clean up their Privacy policy.
Seriously though, has anyone read their privacy page? It's worse than AOL's AIM TOS.To quote a few of their policies:
Yahoo! automatically receives and records information on our server logs from your browser, including your IP address, Yahoo! cookie information, and the page you request.
Yahoo! uses information for the following general purposes: to customize the advertising and content you see, fulfill your requests for products and services, improve our services, contact you, conduct research, and provide anonymous reporting for internal and external clients. aka "Sell your habits as an anonymous client to advertisers
These companies may use your personal information to help Yahoo! communicate with you about offers from Yahoo! and our marketing partners.
The list goes on and on. That is the main reason I try to stay away from Yahoo!.
I'm a virgo and on Slashdot. Coincidence? Yes.
...is clean up their homepage. There is so much going on on I get scared just looking at it. Who can digest that much info? You almost need a search engine for the Yahoo homepage.
Unless Yahoo makes some real headway in the VoIP and movie distribution fronts, they could never complete with Google.
*sigh*
Unfortunately, I am not Wil Wheaton
Last time I ever used yahoo, I noticed that it was already using google's search system just it was displayed on there website and they had powered by google, now most of the users still use yahoo because its one of the first things they ever started using, now if the same search results can be obtained by both why would the common user every stray from google?
Don't compete with Google! I've been a long term fan of Yahoo because it's the Jack of all trades, even if it is the master of none. One Yahoo account comes with a lot of features!
...they stop sucking? The reason why I hate Yahoo is that they're still doing that stupid portal-crap that really annoys the crap out of me. I hate spending twenty minutes on a site looking for the right link - even though obviously the Yahoo execs still think that it's the bomb.
If I spend more than twenty seconds on a site without finding what I'm looking for - I leave the site. My time is worth more than navigating some stupid portal.
Seriously, it's 2005 now. Stop with the portal-crap in order to keep visitors there and start with some content.
I enjoy large posteriors and I cannot prevaricate.
I've been using Adsense on a fairly small website with about 150 unique views per day. I am not their prime customer. What gets me though is the fairly (and increasing) occurences when clicked ads (and not public service ads) earn me 0 cents, or even 1 cent. Another issue is also with google I am required to make $100 before I get each cheque, any system that kept paying me every $5 or so would definetly get me switching!
http://www.sandstorming.com
As an adsense publisher and an active member of the publisher community I can speak for us all in saying that our number one concern is that we are treated like numbers and in turn treated as a dispensable asset. Publishers can be making great money one day and banned from adsense the next for 'suspicious activity regarding click fraud'. Yahoo needs to show publishers that they appreciate our business. Also, setting a minimum CPC on my webpage would make me happy. Just have it default to my own backup ads if nothing can be served based on the content.
I'm not sure Yahoo wants to implement an AdSense-like program. Is anyone else expecting some big blowout in regard to AdSense in the near future? The system appears (to me) to be so rife with fraud with Google having no idea how to combat it. Every monkey that knows how to spell "mesothelioma" is setting up a site hoping to cash in on the high cost per click.
The costs per click used to be very high but as more and more scammers jump on board using various anonymous proxy servers to initiate fake clicks, the costs per click are plummeting pretty rapidly.
To see various costs per click on Overture (you can't see Google's AdSense exact amounts) go to Overture Cost Per Click.
I'm a big tall mofo.
'Ad-sense like' indeed. Overture has been doing pay-per-click searches a lot longer than Google has. They started in 1997 as goto.com.
The Yahoo! Developer Kit has been very easy to use and very powerful. XML services are the future (or present, depending on how bloody you like your edge) of the web.
I Want To Believe
Yahoo could let you put per-page targetted phrases on the page. So in the advert code you could put "Chocolate Confectionary;Wooden Clackers;Pink Pajamas" and if Yahoo hasn't analysed the page yet it serves up an add for Chocolate Confectionary, Wooden Clackers or Pink Pajamas....
There are lots of sites that generate pages on the fly, but Google can't serve up an ad until its parsed the page, so the first showing of that page (the most important) shows no adverts.
Same with general news site, context analysis is terrible for general news, it would be better to let the new site specify the keyphrases on a per-page basis.
Isn't the real question "What can Google do to become more like Yahoo?"
Obviously, no user of Google wants that to happen. But now that Google is a public company, you can expect them to wring every last drop of shareholder value out of their various and many properties:
local.google.com
maps.google.com
images.google.com
scholar.google.com
answers.google.com
catalogs.google.com
www.froogle.com
www.keyhole.com
etc, etc, etc.
In other words, expect the Google start page at some point in the future to look even more cluttered than Yahoo's.
I'm a big tall mofo.
Overture only accept big site. Seems Adsense is more popular than it.
www.iSoftNews.com - Latest software news,fre
There is really nothing Yahoo can do. The question is, does Yahoo have to compete with Google? The answer is no, they don't, nor should they. Both of them have different target audience, different services, different strategies. They can peacefully coexist. To successfully compete with Google, Yahoo would have to "do no evil" and that would kill their bottom line. For example, Yahoo couldn't afford getting banned in China only to get a statement like Google did so the obvious solution was helping China's communist government in censoring its citizens and they did an amazing job from the technical standpoint, even if morally questioned by some. On that example alone we can see that they couldn't possible compete in this and many similar areas. So the answer is: there is nothing they can do, and there is nothing they should do. Those are two different companies, with two different markets and two completely different sets of principles: "do no evil" and "do no evil to shareholders," respectively.
Sincerely,
Pan Tarhei Hosé, PhD.
"Homo sum et cogito ergo odi profanum vulgus et libido."
I feel if Yahoo were to push Skype it would really help to draw more attention to their site and increase their loyal userbase. Why type (IM) when you can Skype? :) But IMO I doubt Yahoo would do this, they'd probably push their own app similar to Skype before they'd hype Skype.
Why?
You just have evidence that the MSN spider is running around in circles; endlessly re-spidering sites it has already spidered - maybe google's spiders are:
A - spidering more different sites than MSN's
B - better at realising they've already spidered a site recently
The list is absolutely easy to someone with half a brain (not yahoo management, apparently):
1) Innovate. While this might seem like a no brainer, yahoo hasn't fixed what is already broken on their own service for some time now. A good example of this would be their stock message boards, which fill with spam and garbage immediately.
Try CSCO for example. It looks like a circus in that message board. Google will walk into this market because people are simply dying for something usable. Yahoo has dominance right now but they will lose that easily because they are satisfied with "good enough".
2) Make all services open and extensible. Mainly, this means that they should stop requiring someone to open yet another unused email account in order to use their services. I already have half a dozen unused email accounts and I don't need another. It would be great if I could use my existing email account for access to IM, Yahoo auctions, etc. But I don't use these services because I don't want to bother with another email account.
3) Promote an open web. VoIP is just now taking off. The world could use, for example, a free, standards based VoIP client for Windows, Linux, etc. Yahoo could gain many friends if they released a non-yahoo specific client. Certainly, they'll have to make money on it some how but I think that they could make more by keeping it open and not bundled with a service. Perhaps offer their own as a default, or whatever.
The bottom line is that they need to adopt google's "do no evil" plan. I could go on all morning with examples.
More
It seems like the first move Yahoo should make is to come up with a pricing model that people can understand. Even if this isn't the best business model, if it attracts customers, Google will be forced to either disclose more of how their system works (negating any advantage their secret algorithms or data give them), or adopt a model that anybody can copy. In other words, they should be trying to get Google to disclose what it has learned during its head-start, even if they lose money doing so in the short run, because this would level the playing field.
After all, one of the things Google has demonstrated is that people prefer transparency and simplicity. This applies to webmasters and advertisers as much as it does to surfers.
It seems to me that the successful internet businesses - ones whos product is the internet itself so to speak - will all wind up looking alike. Pretty much like the early visions for the portals too. 1 place to go to find Movies, Music, News, Games, Chat, Ecomerce (VOIP?). AOL, MSN, GOOGLE, Yahoo, whoever manages to survive, and of course at some point these technologies will be so commonplace in the market that their survival will really become one of marketing and finding a steady usergroup. (Slashdot/OSTG may even qualify for this kind of future)
The rock, the vulture, and the chain
Yahoo turned me away long ago because it insists on using flashy, annoying, intrusive, and irrelevent ads. Plain and simple, Google got it right: Provide targeted, non-intrusive ads.
Frankly, I find Yahoo's ad presentation to be annoying at best. I visit pages for the intended content, not the ads, and yes, ads often pay for the content. But, present them in a way that insults my intelligence, and I'll walk. Instead, present them in a way that makes me want (not have) to view the ads, and you have me at hello...
My mom always said, "Jim, you're 1 in a million." Given the current population, there are 7000 of me. God help us all!
Don't mess with an addicts dosage.
Yahoo's main page is too busy and often has annoying DHTML adverts (or did last time I used it, I've not used it for a while for that reason).
They need to reduce the adverts, simplify their main page so they offer more service and less junk.
how about...they stop sucking?
:(
That's a bad advice... It costed me a boyfriend.
Provide a service similar to Google Groups. It can be of value even though the last 20 years are missing.
Unfortunately, not many people care about newsgroups, so this probably doesn't make business sense.
things they should do and not do
o make damn sure that all their pages are valid HTML and make them small and LOAD FAST
o the mail and calendar services are better than google dont worry about this
o yahoo already have IM now they just need to offer VoIP gateways to countries (might be a problem but investigate)
o better I mean much BETTER shopping sites in terms of the service they offer to shopkeeper's to publish wares (dont brand them as much in terms of yahoo domain)
o look at offering flickr like service NOW ( build inside and look at buying at the same time whatever is faster )
o For Publishers better feedback serve 3 differant kinds of targeted ads
1/ html only (valid html no javascript)
2/ non animated pictures (only jpg png gif)
3/ animated flash or gif (kitchen sink)
o For Advertisers make it easy to log in and better stats
o remember for all pages even the tools make damn sure that all their pages are valid HTML and make them small and LOAD FAST remember 56k modem
regards
John Jones
If Yahoo! is trying to make a name for itself in the search arena, then they should consider making the search feature within the message boards a lot more capable. As it stands now, it is all but useless, and a very poor indication of Yahoo!'s search engine capabilities.
And finally, has anyone here actually gotten any useful information in response to an email that was sent to Yahoo!'s customer service area? ;-)
This is the only way in which they can be "ahead" of Google - be the first to reach the Happy Networking Grounds.
Wired magazine recently had an article on this topic. They had quite a few graphs and charts detailing the differences in services between the two, figures on the amount of R&D spent as well as number of people using each site. Yahoo was ahead by quite a bit on most counts. It was an interesting read, and while I don't normally like that magaizine (way too many ads), I'd recommend this issue.
From "SpamGuard" to RDF/RSS syndicating to "message boards" there are bugs and no place to complain about them...
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
They should look look here
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Wow, they let you kill their cookies on work time?
Now that's a forward looking company policy!
It's the most obvious USP.
International Socialist Black Metal
For a start, focus on the user experience. A small but very significant example for me; google has its sponsored search results listed vertically on a semi-bar on the right out of the way of my eyes, whereas Yahoo has its sponsored search results right at the top and every time I do a search there's a mental effort, however brief, that requires me to check where the first unsponsored search result is in space on the page, and whether what my eyes landed on first is a sponsonred of unsponsored result. As such, Google is considerate and Yahoo is rudely intrusive to an extent that I loathe using it for simply this reason, no matter what else they do.
Other examples abound; when it comes to search, Google seems to focus on the users, Yahoo seems to keep on the overture approach of focusing more on those who pay it, the advertisers, and annoying the users.
Allow people to bid on ads based on the site's placement in the Yahoo directory.
Sometimes Adwords ads get thrown off by content on a particular page. I was running a personal blog running google ads as more of an experiment than anything (I got like 100 hits a week, nothing huge). Once I posted that I had purchased my first home, all of the Google ads turning into cheesy mortgage broker ads, even though none of the other stories had anything to do with mortgages.
Weighting website category classification & keywords would yield better results.
Conformity is the jailer of freedom and enemy of growth. -JFK
According to Thursday's post http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/03/10/180225 &tid=187, all Yahoo has to do is stop sucking! It's simple!
Mark A. McBride -- OmniNerd.com
http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/13.03/yahoo.htm l?pg=2&topic=yahoo&topic_set=# Check the graphics with the article as they give the details on this.
I'm not surprised that techies would think Yahoo has to "compete" as they all love Google but it's akin to asking how Windows will be able to compete with Linux.
[insert sig file here]
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Engage the services of some l33t Lisp Hackers. And eschew curly braces!
International Socialist Black Metal
VOIP might be the keyword.
I know that Yahoo were the first to start VOIP in Japan and they have established market leadership dwarfing all other VOIP services there, it's called Yahoo BB Phone.
Depending on whom you believe it's got either over 1 million or over 3 million paying customers [recent articles returned by google bring up both these numbers, so I don't know which one is correct].
The way this works is you get a set top box from Yahoo which plugs into your DSL and your phone line. Your telephone also plugs in to the box.
Then if somebody calls you on your landline the call will go to your phone as usual. But if somebody who is also a Yahoo customer calls you using your existing phone number, then the call goes VOIP over Yahoo's network and it is free of charge.
If you call somebody who is not a Yahoo customer, you have the choice to use your landline or going through Yahoo's VOIP service at lower tariffs.
Very much like Vonage but it seems to be much better integrated with your existing landline and phone number.
Maybe Yahoo should consider a similar service in the US and other countries. Who knows, maybe they're already working on it.
the macintosh asterisk mailing list http://www.astm
Comment removed based on user account deletion
There you go.
For one thing, they can get their own logo on Slashdot for stories about them instead of using Google's logo. Brand recognition, you know.
The global economy is a great thing until you feel it locally.
Not sure what your talking about but anywhoo, i'll take your bait and run.
1. Searches are sponsored ads, just like google.
2. Portal content is much more organized, familiar and standardized - much better than Google.
3. The ads aren't just garbage. If your looking for hot dates in the singles section you see singles ads. If your looking for cars in the auto section you see auto ads.
I find it laughable that Yahoo light years ahead of Google in content & design & integration & features & ease of use gets blasted and yet google praised for features that are completely lackluster and so yesterday.
Humans would also be better at clustering the results into categories.
Implement MUTP, that way cool new protocol: Mint Under The Pillow. When each click gets me a small chocolate treat, that's the search engine I'm using!
Yahoo is the most organized "portal" on the net.
If your doing research it is much easier to find what you are looking for on yahoo than anywhere else.
Need a new car? Yahoo Autos, Need a new Job? Yahoo HotJobs, need to do some research? Education.yahoo.com
Want to follow business, stocks, rss feeds, news, local weather, auctions, bank accounts, investments? My.yahoo.com.
Want raw search? http://search.yahoo.com
I'm not sure you even know what easy to use and customer friendly means. I can contact Yahoo help on yahoo messenger to find out about a yahoo auction, i can lookup my buddies, do an address lookup and follow everything through in Yahoo without having to "google for it". Infact Yahoo is so easy, so quick that its funny to see Google trying to catchup. Google can only add so much more before it looks worse or exactly like yahoo.
... I was a paying customer of both and while Overture was the first on the market things went only downwards, while Google was learning from all mistakes ... so now I only use Google !
The are still things that can be improved - the minimum price for a click (which now can not be lower than 5 cents), the amount of "click fraud" and so on ...
The websites our company hosts invariably get 75-90% of their hits from a combination of Google, Yahoo, MSN and AOL. For several of those sites, hits from Yahoo are now outstripping hits from Google.
Google's last ranking algorithm modification a month or two ago, has caused large numbers of link farms to be returned on most searches. At the same time, a great many legitimate sites were downgraded.
Meanwhile, Yahoo is now faster at including new sites and appears to be excluding link farms, for the most part.
If Google doesn't undertake some further tweeking to reduce the number of link farms returned, Yahoo's usefulness may threaten Google's preeminance.
M$ Incy Wincy spider climbing up the spout
Down came the rain and washed the spider out
Out came the sun and dried up all the rain
Now M$ Incy Wincy spider went up the spout again!
/. is good for you.
There are still a few categories, such as the photography branch, that I still find handy. This may be habit but I the links seem somewhat recently updated and infrequently stale.
Perhaps they could add an option to suggest new categories.
Then vote on new categories.
Then when a category hits a threshold, put some personal attention into it so it improves rapidly. That boost in topical focused quality of information could buy muchomany new clicks.
That should be all tightly integrated with instant feedback, the new category gets added to the candidate list with a vote of one and a current percentage. If votes come in while a page is up, the change should be reflected immediately. Live, dynamic but topical.
Msn could decrease the amount of bandwidth it takes to even load up its pages, and also change the layout. The current msn.com layout is a few years old, and has seen little change or improvement in that time. How does Microsoft expect to compete if its page is so hard to even navigate, let alone be of preferance to Google's simplicity.
Yahoo's greatest weakness currently, is its e-mail service. Junk mail is rife on Yahoo, the time the mailbox takes to load is huge, and there is still just a miniscule 250mb of space, as opposed to G-mail's 1000mb.
get rid of the bloat.
Remove the barrier of enforced logon.
Widen the support beyond IE with no security.
Yahoo spent $339 on research vs. Google's $139 (where it all went is a mystery though)
Yahoo has 5,500 employees vs. Google's 1,907
Each user spent 4.8 hours on Yahoo per month vs. Google's 0.6
Yahoo gets 119 million unique visitors per month vs. Google's 72 million.
(Data represents four quarters ending Sept. 2004).
Although Yahoo may not be as geek friendly (and therefore Slashdot friendly I guess) as Google, it has a lot of customers and is the starting point for a large part of the web-surfing population.
To me, this seems like very good leverage to squeeze into Google's main revenue source, targeded ads.
Treo + Kaffi = Traffi
I was also a paying customer (advertiser) with both Google and Overture.
My experience (1-2 years ago now) was that Overture was more expensive (£0.10 min cost per click vs £0.04 min cost per click) and that Google got 5-10 times the page views and clicks (UK only advert).
Also, Google adwords admin was very easy to use, while Overture's was confusing and vvvvvvvvvvveeeeeeeeerrrrrrrrrrryyyyyyyyy ssssssssllllllllllloooooooooowwwwwwww
I no longer use Overture.
The subject of the original post makes it sound like Yahoo is down and out and what can they do to possibly compete with the monster that is google....in reality Yahoo currently makes more money then Google...sure Google has a slightly higher Market Cap, but thats only cuz people havn't learned their dotcom stock evaluation lessons. Yahoo already has more tools to compete with Google, at least financially. Yahoo has many more "properties" that could bring in revenue, most of them being in the content arena. I've been using my.yahoo.com since the late 90s, and they continue to improve it...i dont need to go to mail for one thing, news.whatever for another, sports. whatever for something else, its all there, plus all my RSS feeds. But Google will surely have something like this soon and of course slashdot will post an article that Google has made a revolutionary breakthrough with a customizable portal page....sigh
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Anyone know of any plans for google to launch the counter of Yahoo's launchcast?
Does google have anything to compete against yahoo and its my.yahoo.com ?
It's nice.
So, we have an article about "Yahoo's pending entrance into the AdSense advertising market...", which is incorrect. But the Slashdot editor correctly points out that Yahoo's subsidiary Overture has been doing this for quite a while already.
So basically this is not a story at all - why was this posted on Slashdot?
#DeleteChrome
I posted a question to Yahoo asking why a certain rss feed I was subscribing to was not getting updated on the My Yahoo page.
t tp://rss.news .yahoo.com/rss/topstories
e xa mple.com/blog
I thought the response was pretty good. Of course, I could'nt find the information in their help pages... Here it is:
Hello,
Thank you for writing to My Yahoo!.
My Yahoo! has a self-scheduling agent that finds, categorizes, and
periodically checks for updated RSS feeds. The agent adjusts the
frequency of these periodic checks based on a history of how often
content changes.
If it's your site you'd like updated, you can ensure My Yahoo! gets
updated by using our API. Our system will schedule an immediate
refresh
of your site so that My Yahoo! has the most up-to-date version of the
RSS feed. The two interfaces currently available are: REST and XML-RPC.
The REST interface is as follows:
URL: http://api.my.yahoo.com/rss/ping
Parameter(s): u=
HTTP method: GET
Examples:
http://api.my.yahoo.com/rss/ping?u=h
http://api.my.yahoo.com/rss/ping?u=http://site.
The XML-RPC interface is as follows:
RPC endpoint: http://api.my.yahoo.com/RPC2
Method name: weblogUpdates.ping
Parameter(s): 1. Name of site (string)
2. URL of site or RSS feed (string)
Returns: Struct with two members:
1. flerror (boolean) which is true if an error occurred.
2. message (string) which contains "OK" (if successful) or
the error message
For additional information on syndicating your content, please visit
http://my.yahoo.com/s/publishers.html
Thank you again for contacting Yahoo! Customer Care.
Google vs. Yahoo
love slashdot. populate it. use it. abuse it. hate it. kill it. miss it. stop following links, they only kill servers.
Google SMS even works with Tracfone/Alltel and Tracfone/Verizon. Does Yahoo SMS do that? hahahahahahahaha.
That's why we call it Yahpoo.
What does Yahoo do to beat Google?
- Better Search Results
- Clean up your directory - If the content hasn't been updated in a year, removed it from the directory or moved it to an archived listing.
- Cleaner Interface - To much junk on the front page.
- Better-directed advertising
- Less intrusive advertising - I hate those pop-overs
- Make it easier to add your site to Yahoo - I can get spider by Google in a matter of days; it takes months to get considered by Yahoo.
You say things that offend me and I can deal with it. Can you?
Add a professionally designed porn search feature and cache the results.
"God fights on the side with the best artillery." - Napoleon, Marshal of France - speaking truth to power
Pay Firefox developers to make Yahoo the default search engine.
"God fights on the side with the best artillery." - Napoleon, Marshal of France - speaking truth to power
Everytime they do even the most minor thing, or are even "rumored" to be doing something, post a Slashdot story about it ("Google rumored to become next phone company. Google rumored to be buying Apple. Google knitting you a sweater for your birthday")
StupidChildren...the reason jesus is crying
Just for example, say I have a page that is a mortgage rate calculator. Google will probably show ads for other mortgage rate calculators rather than for the more lucrative ads for mortgages themselves.
It is in google's interest to have relevent ads on pages, so it might take some fancy relevency logic or human intervention so that everybody can't put up ads for the absolutely most profitable thing. But isn't relevency what google is good at?
Yahoo or MSN could get a big leg up on Google with such a feature.
- briefcase
- groups
- email (has access to other pop3 accounts via webmail)
Why I use Google:I've had an account on Yahoo since the days when you had to bang two rocks together to get ones. Everything I use google for now I used to use on Yahoo. IMHO, google has just done a better job (except email) with these services. I briefly used Yahoo to host a website but quickly left. They suck at that.
If google were to introduce briefcase, dicussion groups, and access to pop3 accounts via webmail I would probably no longer use Yahoo.
Speak truth to power.
Google isn't perfect. www.bergsresort.com can be found at yahoo but not at google. Try doing a search for "berg's resort" at both google and yahoo. It will only come up in yahoo. Though I have tried desperately to get google to crawl my site.
There is or can be built a machine that can simulate any physical object. -Church-Turing principle
Google is probably more invasive than Yahoo! And certainly more sophisticated about violating your privacy. Once Gmail accounts become common, they will become a spammer to be reckoned with.
The sad fact is that I just want a search engine. I don't want "directed marketing" spyware or behavior tracking.
Google is replaceable. If they were gone tomorrow, I'd just use something else. That fact makes me very wary of Google's stock valuation.
Change Geocities free webpages so the bandwidth usage is metered less often. You get 3gb per month, it shouldnt matter how the usage of that 3gb (or part thereof if a site uses less than 3gb in a given month) is used throught the month.
Search that works...
I don't go to Google for groups or news (though I know there are lots who do) I go to Google because the search works. It's pretty rare that I can't refine the terms of a Google search to find exactly what I'm looking for.
On Yahoo, the result I'm looking for is rarely on the first results page, and the aggregators seem to be 3/4 of the returns for any search.
I don't mind the "portal" aspect of Yahoo, but until they get their search fixed, Google will remain my main starting point when I'm looking for something on the Web.
Interested in a Flash-based MAME front end? Visit mame.danzbb.com
Well, they should consider changing their image. Something like Yooha! with colored letters could do the trick...
I know the difference. It's just that it's before 8 in the morning and I could give a rats ass about posting to a news forum in the morning or what trolls like you think about my lazy grammar.
Of course, it's an old fashioned way, with SCO leading the way with new ideas like profit through litigation and customer alienation, but it might still work.
An obvious enhancement to search engines would be to add a form of Wiki's disambiguation. For example, if I type "reading" into a search engine, am I after information on books or about the settlement of Reading? Further, if the latter, is that Reading, England or one of several American locations? A good example of something that should be completely possible to avoid is if I search for "reading bookshops", the 6th result is "Information about books, bookshops and reading in Andalucia, Spain." Completely sodding useless.
Currently it's fairly well known that a search for Paris Hilton doesn't get you much in the line of hotels (ok, "paris hilton hotel" fixes that, but it would still be nice not to have to try to think up additional words that limit the search results without removing useful results from the list. So perhaps the bookshops-in-Reading-England is a better example. What could you add to "reading bookshops" to get a list of bookshops in Reading, England?)
It's not entirely impossible to automate the process of determining exactly which meaning of "Paris" a given webpage is using - Bayesian techniques currently used for spam detection come to mind. So if a page contains words like "paris boobs fanny", it's less likely to be about travel arrangements than about pr0n (well, that depends what sort of travel plans you have, I suppose), and could be classified into the appropriate bucket. Similarly "paris louvre eiffel" is more likely to suggest the French city.
(Note for American readers: in England, a fanny is a female characteristic, also sometimes referred to as a front bottom. See Roger's Profanisaurus for more euphemisms.)
Of course the obvious problem with this is that Paris the pr0n star's authors are then going to start looking at putting references to French POIs in the website. But this can be countered by extending the use of the Page Rank mechanism - if lots of travel pages point to the page under test, then it's less likely to be a pr0n page than if a bunch of other pr0n sites are linking to it.
Change their name to "Gooogle"?
Wishing I was a millionaire since 1969.
That may be coming.
They must become the anti-google and take on the motto of "Do No Good." Sure most of the people on Slashdot may prefer Good over Evil, but I think there is a large enough population to support a company that takes a firm stance against all that is good in the world.
Yahoo is a lost cause.
Great, so anyone under 18 is basically SOL?
Maybe they could have a separate search engine for kiddies?
Nah. I don't like that idea. Google has it right IMO, I'm not sure the battle they're fighting with the PageRank scammers is a losing one, but it is certainly ongoing... sometimes one party gets the upperhand, while at others, the other side does. It's a kind of back and forth battle, and it is not so intrusive that it makes the service unusable. Google has been very nice recently.
The Yahoo! Directory is still up and running:
http://dir.yahoo.com/
1. Ditch the portal look. Get rid of it, all together, don't hide it, don't do anything but get rid of it. Make the front page be like google's. A logo, a search box, and a button. It is ok to have to links to other services, in a non-obtrusive way. Everything currently on the Yahoo homepage that is below the Yahoo Search button should be eliminated. If they want a news thing... be like google and have people goto news.yahoo.com. Portals are so 1999.
2. Search results are too cluttered. Put your advertisements on the side in a single color. No image advertisements ever. It should be easy to tell the difference between paid search results, and real results. They should not be mixed. A clear distinction must be made, and be obvious for the stupid public. Yahoo actually has a decent search engine behind it... but I won't use it because the interface sucks. Clean it up, and you'll give google some serious competition.
3. Don't be a whore. Yahoo tends to stick advertising everywhere. If I do a search, I want real results first, no sponsored ads. Put the ads to the side. I love yahoo yellow pages... but if I search for florist, I get 2 pages of ads before I can get to real local small businesses. I don't want to have to scroll through 2 pages of junk to get to the real results.
4. Don't make people register to see things like tv listings and what not. Basic features should be free to all to see. Don't make registration a requirement, make it worth my while. Maybe for registration offer to send people an email alterting them when a favorite show is on. (with no ads or tags or anything in the email).
5. Follow google's motto, of "Don't be evil." because yahoo right now is soooooo freaking corporate and willing to whore itself out... I won't use it. Just look at yahoo.com its all been sold as real estate, look at google.com, its simple, clean, and effective.
there, how to turn yahoo around in 5 easy steps.
A feature to filter out results trying to sell me something. I'm so god damned sick of googling for something and getting 3 pages of results that are all storefronts trying to sell a product. Much of the time they have nearly identical html too. I wish google had this option; if I want to buy something I'll use froogle.
"Orthodoxy means not thinking--not needing to think. Orthodoxy is unconsciousness." --Eric Blair
I agree. That's what drove me away from Yahoo.
I used to use Yahoo all the time, but at some point they forgot that the reason everyone used them was the search directory. They started getting obstructive towards the people trying to get listed in the directory, and dmoz.org was launched as a result, pulling away a lot of users.
Then the default was changed for the Yahoo home page, so that when you entered a search term, instead of getting a nice useful list of annotated directory entries, you just got a typical search engine response--except not as good as Google's. Away went thousands more users. I gave up too, as it wasn't at all obvious to me how to find the directory that used to be there, but I could easily find dmoz.org.
Now it seems as if they've un-hidden the directory via "tabs" on the home page. Unfortunately, it's still crippled. You enter a term in directory search and it gives you a page of search results you didn't want, and at the top a couple of links saying there are "related" directory entries you might be interested in. Call me picky, but if I request to search X, the site shouldn't respond with Y and say "Oh, and by the way, you can also search X".
So you click the links to go through to the directory, at which point you discover that it's pretty puny compared to dmoz.org (compare and contrast searches for a random topic).
If you try to add a link, you discover why the Yahoo directory now sucks: they basically offer no ability to add links in a timely fashion unless you pay them money. In other words, they want to charge you money for the privilege of helping them improve their product and compete with Google and dmoz.
Google have never forgotten why people go to them. They're picky about what new features they add, and they keep the interface clean so that existing users don't suddenly find themselves lost. They're also careful not to remove functionality simply because it no longer fits the corporate strategy of the month.
GCHQ Quantum Insert installed. If only our tongues were made of glass, how much more careful we would be when we speak
Sort topics 100% by relevence, and take out all the cruft that is anything but search results. Yahoo, if I wanted all that crap - I'd go back to the mall.
Try it on a few medium to small sized topics, such as "Ruby on Rails activerecord". The API is #2 int the results on Yahoo, yet doesn't show up on the first page on Google (actually, the slashdot article is the top result).
This trend is interesting, because when someone first pointed me to google.stanford.edu, I thought the results sucked compared to Altavista. Gradually, Google got much better and became my primary search engine. But now I find that Yahoo search gives more relevant results at the top of the page.
As I see it, Yahoo needs to do two things to step to Google in the search business:
* Integrate a LIGHTWEIGHT desktop search product. Google Desktop is amazingly light compared to YDS. YDS is a pig.
* Get a proper, simple Adwords clone working and make it less mysterious than Google's. The competitive market wants to see those PPC numbers on the front page.
Yahoo's other services are pretty good. They have far more information they provide than Google (sports scores, weather, stock quotes, etc). I know Yahoo has lost a lot of engineers to Google, but they just really need to start innovating more. Google, every day, continues to come up with more elegant web applications of existing Yahoo services (gmail, groups, maps).
Google will always win. It is supreme.
Don't pay the little guys and suspend their accounts right before you owe them money.
Tell them that they are not intended website for your advertising.
They can't sue to get the $100 or whatever you owe them.
Blame them for the fact that you can't track unique users, click through, impressions etc, or that you can and just don't want to pay your bills.
I have another idea that might work in conjunction with voting: Have the toolbar time how long a user spends on each page and how the user interacts with the page (does he scroll, click on any links, select/copy text, etc.?).
I wouldn't be suprised if both the Yahoo! and Google toolbars don't already do this. Why wouldn't they? Their EULA's basically say they will be beaming info back to the mother ship, don't they?
Beware of geeks bearing formulas.
Someone else commented on Yahoo! asking you to make another dead email to use groups (etc...) which is really annoying, but what I want to know is where did federated (not MS passport) single sign-on go?
Yahoo! is big enough to help push a standard, and since this is a problem for them they could use it on their site, and help bring in others like the NY Times.
Thanks for putting on the feedbag. Thanks for going all out. Thanks for showing me your Swiss Army knife.
Here is the link that google handed me:
http://audacity.sourceforge.net/
Perfectly correct.
Here is the link that yahoo handed me:
http://rds.yahoo.com/S=2766679/K=audacity/v=2/SID= w/l=WS1/R=1/SS=95832193/IPC=us/SHE=0/H=0/SIG=11kie a20m/EXP=1110912050/*-http%3A//audacity.sourceforg e.net/
If yahoo thinks Im going to click on that they can shove it. A$$holes.
that limits their ability to innovate, compete and add valuable services and features people could find worth buying (read currency).
Yahoo, Google, MSN, etc... mean different things to different people depending upon *how* they have chosen to use these free-portals of information/communication.
Yahoo should tightly couple their systems to users by leveraging differing user's contexts in client-side interfaces. My personal *entry* point into Yahoo is at mail.yahoo.com. Many enter at search.yahoo.com. By Maximizing the User experience Yahoo can trump the features war to develop its brand.
I like Google for its quick response and easy to use interface which rivals desktop applications for convenience. Google gets the value of the users experience. Google is earning my loyalty with its "no spam" mail portal and "simple" search portal.
I can see a point where Yahoo might lose its importance to users if the presence of competing products achieve like ubiquity
It should be noted that Yahoo has already been fighting Google on this front - Overture, owned by Yahoo!, has been running an Ad-Sense like program for a while.
Overture has been running an AdSense like program long before AdSense was around. Overture began prior to 2001. Google AdSense began March 2003. Yahoo purchased Overture in Oct 2003.
Yes I am sure thats what a bunch of companies would love. Get all of their money seized by paypal in their holy war against abusers of their service. Ya see paypal loses money due to abuses by people so Paypal shuts down and seizes the money of the abusee or just a random suspicus looking person and makes profit that way.
Didn't know my ex read /.
Hey babe, you left some crap of yours in my basement.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Comment removed based on user account deletion
I've been using Yahoo since about 1995 or 1996 (can't remember first time I used Google). First off, the Google textbox is amazing. I like the fact that its centered on the page and surrounded by white. Quite frankly, links on webpages confuse me and due to my colorblindless, deciphering images is a struggle. I've been to some sites that use image files that are 5-20K in size but due to my 2400 baud dial-up modem they take forever to load. The trend for the internet seems to be slower connection speeds every year, so why keep using .JPG and .GIF images? Screens and screens of text is all I need. Oh, and Flash... at first I didn't have the plugin (only 2% of internet users have the flash plug-in) but after I installed it, I discovered I have epilepsy. Thanks Macromedia.
For me, Google is just a more useful website. I use Google on a daily basis to get the days latest news, stock quotes, maps, and email accounts.
The custom homepage on Google is a nice feature as well so I can place all the info thats important to me on one single webpage. Current AP News reports, my local news reports, sports scores of my favorite college and pro teams, stock portfolio, tv schedule for tonight, latest slashdot articles, tech reviews, snowfall reports from my local ski areas, ups package tracker etc..... this one page gets me up to date on whats going on pretty quick.
Google isn't just about amazing search results and news reports. Their Fantasy Sports games are the best around (plus they're free) and Google's Instant Messaging program is excellent since it doesn't require your friends to have AOL or AIM or CompuServe... again, its free.
Google maps is also very helpful for wayward travelers such as myself. I first started using Google maps in 1997 or 98 to print out driving directions. I have traversed numerous states for the first time with ONLY the Google maps driving directions and absolutly NO road maps or $1,000 GPS navigation devices. Very beneficial if you're driving alone and can't stop to read maps or handheld divices.
Google's finance section is also outstanding. Tons of centralized data that make it much easier to do research for investing.... [ remember the old annual books of corporate info... seems funny now!]
Yahoo on the otherhand always seems to be a step behind - sometimes coming out with similar technologies 3-4 years later!
Anyway, thats just my experience. If you haven't tried some of the features that I mentioned above, visit their websites at:
Google: www.yahoo.com
Yahoo: www.google.com
Actually I don't believe that will happen. Have you ever read an interview with the people who make decisions about the google interface? Do you know their philosophies? If you don't, you were just talking randomly. If you do, you assumed they would change completely. I don't think that will happen, and I hope it won't...
The AACS key is NOT 0xF606EEFD628B1CA427BEA93A9CA9773F
has anyone else noticed a lot of problems with gmail lately? ie mail not delivering, site not responding, slowness, etc.... ?
I realize that it's still in beta but I hope this is not a sign of things to come now that it has such a huge userbase, not to mention that people are using hacks to do things like run filesystems on it....
THE MAGIC WORDS ARE SQUEAMISH OSSIFRAGE
http://shit.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/03/14/1 219225
Yahoo can't do nothing - because of googles Linux base. Maybe if yahoo reinstalls all of their servers to Linux they can start to compete.
yahoo also censors anything it finds inappropriate
if u try to search something that they find unfit, it will say no results found
google however, only blocks stuff like child pornography and not anything else
overall yahoo is like one giant ad space that looks really ugly and clogged up.
I'm just wondering why Yahoo! and MSN don't offer a similar ad service to Google's Adsense. The program is making Google a ton of money, so I don't see why more online companies aren't trying very similar programs. Just a thought. Google Advisor
The original egroups customers, and customers who find their time valuable enough not to sit through interstitial ads to get to list archives detest yahoo, and I think I speak for many of them when I say that we avoid Yahoo when possible because of such obtrusiveness.
You would think that someone in Yahoo would have the basic common sense to know that mailing lists are exactly the worst place to put the most obtrusive ads. No wonder their capitalization ratio relative to Google is totally out of proportion with their sales. That's the canary in the mineshaft, guys: Wall Street thinks you're weaker than Google because Google has found a sweeter spot on the ads-vs.-content scale. Learn the obvious lesson or fade away, it's up to Yahoo.
Lose the stupid ads.
And STOP laying text based ads under them! Now!
And I have even been seeing those floating ads!
WTF! That is porn site crap!
Yahoo sucks, is the answer.
...have their products running in Beta for years ;-)
Nice SIP exchange and client so that someone can call me with my yahoo email address (Sorta like FWD plus vonage) . Its gonna happen very soon with one of the big players as they have the country presences.
Maybe FWD, Vonage, Yahoo and Google could co-operate? (..hey a flying pig!)
www.boznz.com Simple solutions to complex problems.
Please repost: here, and please fax a copy to Mr. Terry Semel, 408.349.3301, wait a few days, and then call investor relations at 408.349.3300 a few days later and ask if he got the message.