Slashdot Mirror
Google Sees Biggest Search Traffic Drop Since 2009 As Yahoo Gains Ground
helix2301 writes: Google's grip on the Internet search market loosened in December, as the search engine saw its largest drop since 2009. That loss was Yahoo's gain, as the Marissa Mayer-helmed company added almost 2% from November to December to bring its market share back into double digits. Google's lead remains overwhelming, with just more than three-quarters of search, according to SatCounter Global Stats. Microsoft's Bing gained some momentum to take 12.5% of the market. Yahoo now has 10.4%. All other search engines combined to take 1.9%.
Thank you Mozilla!
clearly that 'default search provider' makes a big difference.
I thought they subcontracted through google such that a search in yahoo is ultimately queried by google? No?
I've decided to stop wasting my time responding to AC trolls/sockpuppets... so if you want a response from me... login.
Firefox switched to Yahoo. That's it.
Yahoo search is powered by Bing so why bother?
Yahoo as the default search engine will likely be the nail in the coffin for Firefox. I hope it was worth the money.
I wonder how much of this is due to Firefox switching the default search engine. I figured it would only change for new machines, but it actually changed the search engine on existing installs, at least for my machines.
Anthropic principle: We see the universe the way it is because if it were different we would not be here to see it.
Soulskill hired by Yahoo.
Now that that's out of the way I'll say it again, why does Yahoo still exist.
"If any question why we died, Tell them because our fathers lied."
I guess it pays to sponsor Firefox.
... ever since the first search engine (altavista) appeared the search paradigm has essentially remained unchanged? ... and it's getting stale ...
Can't the search engine companies, and I don't care if it's Bing, Google or Yahoo, come up with something new? Something that is disruptively simple and yet extra-ordinarily innovative?
Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
As a resident of Canada, I find that Google has put a search filter in place that I can't get around. Basically, it makes me type in specific words like "breasts" or "naked" if I want to see picture results including such things. I don't spend a lot of time looking for pornography, but I don't want to worry that 10% of the the Ontario Museum's art collection is off limits to me unless I specifically go on a search for boobies.
No doubt this protects Miss Grundy and her fellow church ladies from the sight of the occasional naked breast, but I find it offensive and paternalistic, and as a result, I've cut back quite a lot on my use of Google.
I've calculated my velocity with such exquisite precision that I have no idea where I am.
I switched to ddg a year or two back because I thought google had too much information on me. Maybe 2-3 times a week I need to revert to a google search, but ddg is fine for 99% of my searches.
It's certainly noticed that I go up to my local university campus in the afternoon on a specific day every week (although it doesn't know why...yet) and when I pop open the Search app it already shows at the top result, before I even have the chance to enter a search for bus and train schedules, a set of routes and times for transit up to campus. There as sense in which that's all just an obvious outgrowth of networked data, so perhaps calling it "extra-ordinarily innovative" is a stretch, but it's definitely something new for a search engine, and at least for me (again, your mileage may vary, especially vis-a-vis privacy concerns) is very convenient.
I remember sigs. Oh, a simpler time!
TFA almost says as much, basically, with Google losing 2.1% share, Yahoo gaining 1.8%, Bing gaining 0.4% and all others combined losing 0.1%. It's a pretty dramatic win for Yahoo and considering it occurs right after Firefox switched, I think it's pretty clearly that.
I had to help the non-technical staff around my office because they were utterly confused when suddenly they started getting Yahoo results rather than Google, and sites they used to find so easily weren't showing up in their searches. I too had thought it was only going to be for new installs; was a bit of a rude awakening.
I remember sigs. Oh, a simpler time!
leave the existing people alone, mmm'kay?
If you had chosen a search engine it would have... Only the default changed.
IMO, I don't see a way to do this painlessly...
Either way, I've actually started using yahoo in Firefox, and barely notice the difference.
From November: http://tech.slashdot.org/story...
"Google's 10-year run as Firefox's default search engine is over. Yahoo wants more search traffic, and a deal with Mozilla will bring it. In a major departure for both Mozilla and Yahoo, Firefox's default search engine is switching from Google to Yahoo in the United States."
A 21st century issue: the irony of technologies of abundance in the hands of those still thinking in terms of scarcity.
Turn off safe search?
Actually, back in December 2012 Google tweaked things so that SafeSearch is, to a limited degree, always on; unless you explicitly search for "pornographic" materials they will generally filter out such results. As a Google rep put it in a statement to the press,
I remember sigs. Oh, a simpler time!
Good for them but I highly doubt the phrase "Yahoo it" will catch on.
On the Internet search market google No.1
http://chanhdaomy.com/
The only reason Bing has 12.5% of the market is because it is the default search engine for any MS-based product, including (especially) its cell phones. Most people switch to Google as quickly as possible, but some just keep the defaults.
Google started blocking all tor exit nodes from submitting querries. Naturally the searching is going to have to go somewhere else.
Someone who isn't blocking tor exit nodes.
I've noticed other sites(cloudflare.com, etc) are blocking the exit nodes as well.
What's "Yah Who". Wait, I'll google it.
I thought it was a mass revolt because of privacy issues. Silly me, no one cares about that.
Just me and Kasabian...
-
"Firefox makes Yahoo default"
No, Firefox made Microsoft Bing search the default now: Advertise on the Yahoo Bing Network.
That's giving some people the EEDIE Jeebies. Will Microsoft Embrace, Extend, then Demonically Implement Evil?
If Microsoft stops providing Bing search, many people will desert Yahoo, stop seeing Yahoo ads, and Yahoo may slowly (quickly?) die.
People are just getting worse results now. Say what you want about Google, but it still gives good search results.
Yahoo! has been providing shit services, including search, since 1995. And for some of us actually getting the results we're looking for is what's most important, followed closely by not using Microsoft.
Level playing field? I think not.
More about DIE, the possible Demonic Insertion of Evil:
If Microsoft eventually stops providing Bing search to Yahoo, Yahoo would no longer pay Mozilla to trick Firefox users into searching with Bing by switching to Bing as the default search engine, instead of Google search.
Then Mozilla would have less money to develop Firefox. Would Microsoft's Internet Explorer then become the most-used browser?
The stats look like bollocks. Google isn't available in China, where Baidu reigns supreme. Presumably someone forgot to tell us that this refers just to the USA, if the numbers mean anything.
Not so, you missed fonts, screen res, installed plugins and all the other data. Using just the user agent and ip address is not enough, but there are plenty of parameters available to the browser to take it to 1:1.
https://panopticlick.eff.org/
As much as MS and to a lessor extent partner Yahoo have ticked me off many times in the past, I still don't want a near monopoly in Search Land. Google is getting arrogant in some areas and they need to be kept in check.
Table-ized A.I.
Real masochists slam their keyboard into their face until the site they are trying to reach comes up.
Having to work for a living is the root of all evil.
As much as I distrust Google for privacy they have innovated quite a bit, sometimes competing with other big players. As one easy example: G+ was supposed to be a safer version of Facebook/Myspace with stronger controls. If the whistle blowers had not pegged Google they could have easily picked up a huge amount of Facebook users. Today people don't trust either (or remain in blissful delusion but that's another story) so Google gained no market share in something that they could have owned a majority of.
This shows that companies do innovate when they get large, it's that they are doing other things that make the innovation pointless to potential consumers.
2009 Search: Blue tits = Cyanistes caeruleus
2014 Search: Blue tits = girls of Avatar
I use DuckDuckGo for the most part now. It's imperfect but, like many UK people, I dislike the tax-avoidance [edging on tax evasion], the hyper-intrusion and the unhealthy dominance of Google [and Amazon]. Before anyone from the US jumps on me, I would do the same for a UK [or French etc. etc.] owned organisation that displayed the same 'symptoms'.
However, when I do use Google, usually via DuckDuckGo with !g, I notice that the results seem to be less relevant each month. I know they play around constantly with the algorithms and personal profiles [hence as an anonymous Googler, I get something less than optimal] but it's just 'not very good' now. As programmer I often go straight to Stack Exchange anyway, short-circuiting the search engine bit entirely.
On y va, qui mal y pense!
Would this have anything to do with both Firefox and iExplorer now using Bing as the default search engine. Not to mention Windows apps that use Bing to do searches, which cannot be changed to any other search engine.
"... Bing Rewards points ..."
Microsoft pays people to use Bing!
So, any supposed "popularity" of Bing (But It's Not Good) is at least partly due to the fact that Microsoft PAYS people to use it.
To me, that's another example of Microsoft DIE, the Dastardly Inclusion of Evil.
Bing Rewards FAQ quote: "I'm not a US resident, can I still join Bing Rewards? No, only U.S. residents (50 U.S. States and D.C.) are eligible to join Bing Rewards. Also, you can't earn or redeem credits when you're traveling outside of the US."
It had the NEAR keyword which helped filter pages that had keywords scattered across a page
Google has something similar: the asterisk in a quoted phrase. For example, "foo * bar" will look for pages containing foo, then zero or a small number of words, then bar.
In the era of carrier-grade NAT on IPv4, "originating IP address" just identifies what city you're in at best.
Any company that tells you it won't be evil, is like a used car salesman telling you he's honest. If they have to say they are, they aren't.
Does "We offer CARFAX reports" on the dealership's door count as "having to say they are"?
Especially given the negative product placement the brand got in Gulliver's Travels, in which the Yahoos are a tribe of hunter-gatherer humans living on the border of what is essentially Equestria from My Little Pony.
A lot of Verizon-branded Android phones have shipped with Bing.
Did I just read "Mayer-helmed"? Isn't "Yahoo, led by Marissa Mayer" sufficiently clear? Do we really need this kind of garbled phrase?
A continuous chain of upgrades from Windows 98se to Windows XP to Windows 7 to Windows 8.1, or from Ubuntu 4.something to 14.04, is plausible. Someone's done it all the way from Windows 1 to 7.
That's an awesome find. Thank you very much for sharing it. :)
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
I wanted to see what a 2D block based results set would look like so I used Yahoo API to make an experimental search interface:
http://www.hopblocks.com/
Then I added a proxied keyword hi-lighting preview panel so I don't even have to visit pages.
I use it for my own searches but you are free to try it
Very interesting !
Many thanks for sharing your site !!
Yahoo mail crashes often under Firefox, installed on a vanilla Fedora 21 workstation, and is incredibly slow when it isn't crashing.
I've had to switch to Google Chrome to read my Yahoo mail!
To use a Yahoo product, I have to use their competitor's browser! That's not a sign of a healthy company.
Maybe it's time to switch to gmail.
Build your own Google type light weight search engine at your home
http://www.nagaiah.com/google....
The default search engine on Chrome on the family computer used to be Google until it mysteriously switched to Yahoo. I switched it back a couple of times thinking that someone keeps installing something that does this, until once it switched back to Yahoo when no one other than me had used it. I fixed the issue by resetting Chrome's settings. Hmmm...