Slashdot Mirror
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?"
Heh... I'll cop to it. But I didn't get any message from Yahoo saying I already have a search engine in front me.
Before the first result, is says "Search the Web with Yahoo!" and gives me a second search box. I'm using Firefox on Linux.
Rather than type in "http:///www.yahoo.com", it can be simpler to type in "yahoo" into a google search text box, hit return, and click on the appropriate link from google's results.
Mea navis aericumbens anguillis abundat
Yahoo may be selfish but google is lawful evil! ps:Enough already with the bad karma!
Back in the days when there were not a whole slew of service providers available, AOL was one of the few with easy access and local dial-up numbers. (Am I dating myself yet?) And back in my AOL days before it became the bane of the Internet, the portal features allowed one to type in a "keyword" which would then take you to a web page that was associated with that keyword. However, you did not leave thier portal and never really hit the actual webpage because the portal seemed to cache the most popular sites to improve performance on slow dial-up (we're talking 14.4 modems, not even a 33.6). Now, in the present days of accessible broadband, many people are jumping to the fatser connections and being forced to abandon the AOL dial-up services they came to know, love and abuse.
Due to this phenomena, it seems that many people are inadvertantly using the search features of newer browsers to type in keywords and get the page they are looking for immediatly. The search engines are shooting themselves in the foot by adding the Google and Yahoo toolbars and making this ability accessible to users. What's worse is that with these toolbars in the browsers, even if the page is cached, unlike how AOL's portal used to operate, every time the ENTER button is pressed, it hits the search engine. Since computers have become more accessible to the general public and arguably more intuitive to use (even Windows) there are many people who know only a world like AOL. This limited knowledge leads to poor behavior on the actual Internet. Since more of these AOL'ers are tearing off the AOL portal training wheels, they are hitting the real Internet in droves and using bad habits propogated by AOL's effort to preserve a competative advantage in thier portal.
Hm. Even when I switch off javascript for yahoo, it still pops up for me.
every once in a while if I can't remember the spelling of a URL I'll type it into google for the handy spell checking, since google usually does a good job of popping up what I meant- especially if it's a site I only visit rarely and I remember that the URL is spelled funny, but I don't remember in what way it's spelled funny. Better than giving another hit to sleezy people squatting on typo domain names.
I also agree that it's terrible that some people think that this is just the way to navigate "teh intarnets", rather than something that is done occasionally for a specific reason.
Famous Last Words: "hmm...wikipedia says it's edible"
New users can't tell the difference between the URL box at the top of the browser and the search box at the top of search engine pages. At a previous web dev job we had a customer that did the same thing, that one was fun to troubleshoot.
I reconfigured their Internet Explorer so they had their address bar back. Tomorrow I might teach them how to change their home page.
Zen tips: Pay attention. Don't take it personally. Believe nothing.
As a system administrator and local geek, I have hundreds of people who function exactly like this. You tell them to "Type it in the address bar", and they respond, "The what?" I've watched people use a search engine as if it were the address bar. I've even watched them type in the entire web address, http://www.google.com/ into Yahoo!'s search field and click 'Search', then click the Google search result. Though I suppose now they'd just go back to Yahoo!'s search page again?
Of all the things we hate Microsoft for, naming their web browser "Internet Explorer" is on the top of my list. However! At least they label the address bar, where as Mozilla's Firefox is just a white box with a green arrow.
No sig for you. YOU GET NO SIG!
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.
Cheers,
Fozzy
"The past was erased, the erasure was forgotten, the lie became truth." ~1984 George Orwell
Anyone else do a search for the term "search engine"?
Yahoo's #1 return is google, but googles #1 return is msn search (who shows google as it's #1 for this search)
Sometimes, life itself is sarcasm...
It can actually be spelled either way, blond or blonde. Although now that I am typing it, Firefox doesn't think blonde is a word...
Stupid Firefox.