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?"

Comments

kill two birds

[FudRucker]

http://www.gahooyoogle.com/

Re:Not Weird

[matt328]

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.

Metrics for IE6

[eldavojohn]

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.

Re:Self fulfilling prophecy

[idonthack]

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.

Re:Self fulfilling prophecy

[naChoZ]

(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.

Re:Why is Yahoo the #1 search term on Google?

[denttford]

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).