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Why "Yahoo" Is The #1 Search Term On Google

An anonymous reader writes "Google Trends indicates that over the course of the past year the search term "Yahoo" became more popular than "sex", making it the #1 query on Google. Yahoo apparently faces a similar dilemma with roles reversed: When you search for "Google" on Yahoo, Yahoo thoughtfully displays a second search box as if to tell you, "Hey cutie, you have a search engine right in front of you!" A puzzling phenomenon? An strange aberration?"

17 of 347 comments (clear)

  1. kill two birds by FudRucker · · Score: 5, Informative
    --
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  2. Re:Not Weird by matt328 · · Score: 5, Informative

    Why not just type yahoo in the address bar, and hit Ctrl+Enter? IE and Firefox both append http://www./ and .com to the beginning and end when you do a Ctrl+Enter on any word in the address bar. With Firefox, Ctrl+Shift+Enter will add .org instead of .com.

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  3. Re:Self fulfilling prophecy by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Informative

    The break tag is your friend.

    \o/
    .|.
    /.\

  4. Strangely enough.. by zyl0x · · Score: 2, Informative

    The Canadian Yahoo site doesn't use the same trick. Try it.

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    Blerg.
  5. Metrics for IE6 by eldavojohn · · Score: 4, Informative

    http://www.google.com/
    IE6: 15,524k

    http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=testing
    IE6: 15,896k

    http://www.yahoo.com/
    IE6: 29,492k

    http://search.yahoo.com/search?p=testing&fr=yfp-t- 501&toggle=1&cop=mss&ei=UTF-8
    IE6: 25,848k

    I don't want this to be a browser war, I want this to be an analysis of these search engines. In IE6, Yahoo fares even worse. The ratio ranges from 1:2 on the homepage to 3:5 on a random search.

    --
    My work here is dung.
  6. Re:Self fulfilling prophecy by idonthack · · Score: 4, Informative

    Yahoo thoughtfully displays a second search box as if to tell you,
    They don't actually say anything, that was just the summary author being facetious.
    --
    Why is it that when you believe something it's an opinion, but when I believe something it's a manifesto?
  7. Re:Self fulfilling prophecy by Hemogoblin · · Score: 2, Informative

    If you search "msn search" and "ask" you get the extra search box. Keywords such as "altavista", "msn", "mamma search", and "ask jeeves" don't have the box.

    I don't realy see what the point of it is, but I hoping for some kind of conspiracy. Freemasons run the country!

  8. Re:Self fulfilling prophecy by skymt · · Score: 2, Informative

    It works for me. Here's a screenshot for proof (Opera, Linux).

  9. Re:Yahoo! Advertising by jdcool88 · · Score: 2, Informative

    Why does everyone forget about http://search.yahoo.com/? Now, I haven't tested the memory usage for that page versus Google's home page, but it seems a lot closer to Google than just going to www.yahoo.com.

    You have to remember, Yahoo's search engine is not its main focus anymore, so you should expect their homepage to reflect this.

  10. Metrics for Opera by justthinkit · · Score: 2, Informative

    http://www.google.com
    Opera: 24,128k

    http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=testing&btnG= Google+Search
    Opera: 24,420k

    http://www.yahoo.com
    Opera: 33,840k

    http://search.yahoo.com/search?p=testing&fr=yfp-t- 501&toggle=1&cop=mss&ei=UTF-8
    Opera: 33,508k

    [Note: this is with a 400K hosts file that tends to filter most ads]

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  11. Re:I Am Serious. Dead Serious. by RxScram · · Score: 2, Informative

    penultimate: next to last, not second best.

  12. Re:Self fulfilling prophecy by naChoZ · · Score: 3, Informative

    (Oddly, I rarely use my embedded web-browser search box).

    I actually use the embedded one exclusively, even though I have the google toolbar installed. Aside from regular searches, I'm often too lazy to open up a real calculator app for simple things, so I'll type in a calculation in that embedded search box and it pops up the "suggestion" which is the calc results without ever having to press the Enter key. For whatever reason, even though suggestions work, it does not display calc answers in the suggestion popup for the regular google toolbar.

    --
    "I can be self-referential if I want to," said Tom, swiftly.
  13. Re:Self fulfilling prophecy by sarcasticfrench · · Score: 2, Informative

    I only see it when I search Yahoo with the in browser search box. Is this possibly targeted at Firefox users for some reason?

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  14. Re:Self fulfilling prophecy by badasscat · · Score: 2, Informative

    Actually, I'm one of those people who does this, even before this article. I pretty much always use google, I have it on my 'address bar' as a quick link (Oddly, I rarely use my embedded web-browser search box). Often times, I'm looking for a Yahoo! service, which by habit, I use Google.

    My wife does this too. I can't really understand it, but she's got Google as her homepage and even if she *knows* the address of a site, she will type the name into Google and then click the link that comes up rather than just typing it into her address bar and hitting control-enter. I have even seen her mistakenly search for Google on Google, just out of force of habit.

    There are probably a lot of people who operate this way, using Google as a combination semi-automatic portal/search, whereas we mostly think of it as just search. They're typing things in not because they need to search for them, but because they just rely on Google to serve them up links that they can click.

    In a way, I guess this is more like real, hardcore old-school web browsing - the first browsers didn't even have an address bar, everything was done through hyperlinks. (That's the whole point of the web.)

  15. Re:Why is Yahoo the #1 search term on Google? by denttford · · Score: 5, Informative

    Or after typing "yahoo" you just hit control+enter to append www. and .com

    That works in all major browsers, but firefox will also append .net (shift+enter) and .org (control+shift+enter).

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    Leben Sie jetzt die Fragen.
  16. Re:Self fulfilling prophecy by IICV · · Score: 2, Informative

    With konqueror, you can get a wikipedia search with wp, google with gg, debian package, with deb, etc.
    You can do that in Firefox as well, and older versions came with something like Google and Wikipedia and IMDB predefined. I'm not sure about the most recent versions, but only because it just imports my bookmarks. In any case, here's how to set up your own: http://www.mozilla.org/products/firefox/smart-keyw ords.html
  17. Re:Sounds logical to me by KevMar · · Score: 2, Informative

    I several reasons for this.

    Like you mentioned the auto search from the address bar is one, but i would assume the people that know how to change that setting will understand it.

    I dont give users much credit sometimes. I had one person in need of help call me. They were trying to access a internal website but were un able to get it to load. After the long conversation that included having here say each key as she pressed them, we finaly realized that she was typing it in a search box and not the address bar.

    People get these search bars loaded and confuse them with the address bar. So to get to google, they type google in the search bar.

    another thing search sites do is steal the focus. If i start IE and click the adress bar before the page loads, my address will end up in the search box. there are times I have just hit enter instead of retyping it.

    In a way, there usage has ben artifitialy inflated because of these search bars and auto focusing forms.

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