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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.
you mean this? http://search.yahoo.com/
Admitedly the front page is messy, but I know lots of people who would complain if they have to navigate through a couple of sub menus to get to what they want. I Wouldn't mind the cookies and ads if it knew extacly what I wanted. (finace yes, fashion no)
sorry 'bout the mess...
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! automatically receives and records information on our server logs from your browser, including your IP address, Yahoo! cookie information, and the page you request.
This is a standard Apache feature. Virtually every website logs all requests - Yahoo is normal here, not the exception.
Clean search site? Done.
Google can do that. That's where they're lacking! ;)
Personally I do not mind the Yahoo home page. They do have a search page which is clean and used only for searching (like Google, really) while the main home page is the portal page, offering links to everywhere else.
Also I do not think it is cluttered; full of information and links, maybe, but everything does seem to be in a nice neat order instead of strewn throughout the page.
Guy asked me for a quarter for a cup of coffee. So I bit him.
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.
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
There you go.
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
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?
I got a check from AdSense and I haven't made $100 the whole time I've been using it
That's because up until a few months ago Google paid out AdSense balances whenever the balance reached $100 or at the end of the calendar year. They've dropped the year-end payout option, so now you have to wait.
EricTips for using AdSense
I Wouldn't mind the cookies and ads if it knew extacly what I wanted. (finace yes, fashion no)
You mean like this?
http://my.yahoo.com
Only been aorund for 3+ years...