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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?"
Yahoo! will display that box for any search engine, try "msn search" or "ask.com" and I personally wouldn't use the words "thoughtful" or "cutsie" to describe it. It's just selective advertising. And--like nearly all forms of advertising--I hate it.
Considering that www.yahoo.com takes about 5,000k more memory than www.google.com in my Firefox browser, it's obvious to me which one I use by default. Now with the search box in the upper right being able to link to either of them, I still find that Yahoo!'s returned results has a larger memory footprint than Google's.
My work here is dung.
Well, nowadays they would send you to Novell so it might even work ;-)
I would imagine it's because a HUGE population out there just doesn't understand or care what a "default page" is, how to change it, or that someone (or some kitty'n'virus download executable) left their computer with such a page as the default. They know they want to "look it up on the Googles" so they get to it by typing google in the "slot" or "address bar" that's right there in the middle of the screen every time they launch "the Internet."
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Not at all. A lot of people don't know the difference between an address bar and a "search box." They type where they want to go into whatever is handy, and the browser (eventually) takes them there. I've seen more than one person start up their browser and type full URLs into search engines. Attempts to "correct" them are futile because what they are doing gets them what they want.
Everyone seems to assume when looking at the search terms that people are being stupid and actually searching for a search engine. This is not always the case. For instance, while Google is getting better at this, they have not always been good at providing links to their various services. For the longest time, I knew of no way to get to a direct link to Google Analytics, thus if I was on a computer that I didn't have bookmarks, I would simply search for "google analytics" which gave me the results I needed. Both google and Yahoo are used for much more than as a search engine. Add to this that they are also both in the news a fair amount and people may want to find information about some news development. Don't be too quick to assume the reason for people making searches, particularly when you don't know the full search string that they used.
j.goforth
Apparently, many people still don't use the address bar to go to websites. They actually type addresses or the second-level domain name in the search engine that happens to be the default home page. My mother-in-law has a HP-Compaq laptop that had yahoo.com as her default home page. SO, if someone buys a computer where yahoo.com is default, but they prefer to use google, they simply type google in the search box to get to google.com. My mom does something similar. She doesn't remember URLs, she relies solely on the default home page search to navigate the internet.
I blows my mind that after all these years, people still do this.
The reason Google is successful, is that they understand the needs of their audience and they cater to them. Yahoo has never allowed anyone to correct their business model, which is why Google exists today.
The dangers of knowledge trigger emotional distress in human beings.
People have already commented on the fact that it's "mindblowing" to them that the average computer user can't differentiate between the address bar and a search box, not to mention that they don't remember or use URLs. I think that's a bit of an elitist, naive view of the overwhelming majority of internet users. Side-stepping the (woefully draining) topic of "why isn't Aunt Ruth more adept at computing?", people googling for yahoo is no different than dialing 411 to get an operator to look up a phone number and make a connection for you. Sometimes it makes sense.
Sometimes you're driving and can't safely get out the yellow pages (or yellowpages.com) to look up a number and call it.
Sometimes you're on a device with limited typing capabilities and can't be bothered to type "http://" with 9 keys.
Sometimes you don't know what "http://" even means, let alone are skilled enough at typing to quickly knock in "http://www.google.com" when "google" is already strenuous enough and all you wanted in the first place.
I know, it's 2007. People should learn and adapt. I get it. That's my gut reaction too, but then again, tell that to my grandma who has never driven a day in her life because back when she could've learned, it wasn't necessary or (apparently) proper for women to have a driver's license or a car. As weird as it seems in today's society, it hasn't stopped her from living a full life.
-Rylfaeth
A lot of people simply don't care to learn the difference between the search box and the address bar. "If I type what I want into this box here, I sometimes get a strange error message. But if I type it into that box there, then I get what I want. Therefore, I'll use that box there for everything." And you know what? It doesn't bother me that they don't care. In fact, I think it's good that they don't care. Computers should adapt to people, not the other way around.
/ 27/1160055.aspx
http://blogs.msdn.com/oldnewthing/archive/2006/11
Since many people have been making fun of me for posting this, I'm going to go ahead and point out that soon one of the most common computers in the world will be the OLPC. Now, my parents are still stuck on a phone line so when I visit them I use Google. And I definitely see a difference. I suspect that the people using OLPCs will be using simply the search engine that is fastest for them. They will have low bandwidth & little, slow memory.
So, yeah, I think my initial argument was valid. Now, you might say that they don't want people with no money using their search engines (what ads will they click?) or that these people will probably speak Swahili or another non-English language, but I contend that having the traffic will reflect your market share. And in the end, the image as "the penultimate search engine" is the only thing that matters to these guys.
My work here is dung.
So what are you doing that memory matters so much that you select your web search engine based on how much browser memory that it uses, but is so unimportant that you are surfing the web while you are doing it? Navel investigation?
Nerd rage is the funniest rage.
"Hands up how many people went between google and yahoo trying these searches?"
I did, for one. I didn't think the submission would be correct - why would someone at Yahoo think putting up a "hey dummy" search box was a good idea?
But... that's exactly what they do - they make it just a little bit harder to find what I'm searching for.
When I search for "yahoo" on Google, it works exactly as I expect it should. That, in a nutshell, is why Google is my default search engine.
#DeleteChrome
The interesting thing is what firefox does when you type 'yahoo' into the address bar. It (surprise, surprise) does a google search for 'yahoo' and takes you to the first result. Watch the status bar some time when you're typing a word into the address box sometime.
In fact, I wonder if that's one of the primary factors at work here. If there are lots of people doing that, then google will be getting huge numbers of hits for things like yahoo, even if people aren't going to the Google web page to search for it.
How can we continue to believe in a just universe and freedom to eat crackers if we have no ale?
Memory matters.
Processor load matters.
Page size (bandwidth) matters.
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"I can't complain, but sometimes still do..." Joe Walsh
Also, maybe it is attributed to people using other peoples computers and for some reason find it faster to do a search on google than to type in google.com. I wish people would stop using MSN as their home page. Is it still really slow to pull up?
Can I bum a sig?
Also, I find for something like yahoo, it's faster in firefox just to type in yahoo and hit enter in the address bar and have it do the google i'm feeling lucky result than to type out http://www.yahoo.com/
1. When you type an address in the address bar, (at least in firefox), it does a google search behind the scenes for your URL.
2. Google is my homepage. When I launch firefox, the google search box has focus. Why go to the address bar to type "cnn" when I can do it in the search box?
3. Browsers may add "http://www." and ".com", but what if it is https and .org? If you just search for it you don't have to worry about it.
4. Search engines correct typos, address bars do not.