Yahoo goes pure Google

If you've not noticed it yet then do a search in Yahoo.com.

No web site results (Yahoo Directory) any more just web pages (Google).

Can't see why anyone is going to pay for a listing in Yahoo anymore.

I can't quite tell yet how its affected me as I ranked well in Yahoo for somethings and Google for others. Howver I don't much like the fact that Google, Yahoo & AOL are now all essentially the same (maybe Google will ban them for being mirrors!)

Yahoo.co.uk not changed yet thankfully

Thanks 999GI for the news, l was going to pay to get listed on yahoo.com not now my money is going to Overture.

I worry about Google ending up with a total monopoly with online businesses going boom or bust with every twitch of the google algo.
Best to spread things around and not concentrate on only google in my opinion.

Aly

Google, technically, already has a monopoly. One school of thinking in economic theory stipulates that one organisation only needs 40% of the marketshare to operate a monopoly and it's my understanding that this is the case already

Oddly, I noticed a fair few yahoo searches in my log files today. Not being listed in yahoo's directory, I very rarely saw much from yahoo at all.

Anyway, it's not suprising really. Many of the yahoo directory matches have been out of date and very few new listings are added. I've attempted to get several not-for-profit sites listed in the past two years, never suceeded. I even had an inquiry opened on one of them, which resulted in nothing.

I think it's likely the UK version will go in the same direction, inevitable, even.

I'm afraid I have to say this is a wise move. Paying for inclusion in a directory is against my principles of only paying for results, and I'm afriad to pay $200 to simply be considered is not moral.

Yahoo, just 3 years ago, was the most popular search facility and the rapid decline in popularity, IMHO has been due to two things, 1) directory matches were poor, 2) the process of looking at directory matches first, web pages second was too slow.

So, in summary, I give my thumbs up to this. Wise move Yahoo Inc.

Cheers,

I always liked the old Yahoo results.

For example if I want to buy insurance I want to buy it off a reasonable brand. A search in Yahoo would normally help me find a decent name pretty quickly, whereas google is littered with cheap-insurance-here.coms which I don't want to use for this sort of thing.

I agree that in many instances Google was/is superior but in those cases I just used Google.

At least I had different search engines for different search problems, whereas now its one size fits all.

I've got about 10 commercial sites into Yahoo for free this year and todays news has certainly made me feel less smug about that, not to mention how I feel about the 5 or so that I paid full whack for!

I personally hope that they modify they algorithm to continue to show google results but only those that also have a yahoo listing as well. Relevance + credibility - that would be good.

Hi 999Gi,

I did a few comparisons with Yahoo Google results and Google's results and it seems there is an inclusion of an extra part in the algo giving credit to existing entries in the directory.

Personally, if I'm looking for something in a particular category, like insurance companies, I don't use Google either, I just use DMOZ

Cheers,

There's speculation that Yahoo's Directory may replace DMOZ's as being the big directory to influence Google & provide the results for the Google Directory.

Now that Google basically controls 76.2% (Neilsen WebReach) of all web searches, do others feel as vulnerable as I do?

One twitch of the algo and poof you're gone.

Absolutely
They say don't rely on getting your traffic from a single source, but what if there IS only one source.

OK I know there PPC, MSN/Inktomi, Lycos (I'm stretching here) and Alta Vista (ok that is a joke), but its still very polarised.

The strategy has to be link swapping
1. It helps with google
2. Each link is an extra source of traffic

The second point is often overlooked but I think it may be due a comeback.

The deal that has been struck between Google and Yahoo is non-exclusive, so watch out for other provides like Inktomi pitching hard to get some of their results into Yahoo.

Although there will be a lot of people waiting to see whether paying for a listing will be worth it, we will continue to do so for two reasons:

1. The traffic that comes from Yahoo Directory is still significant and no pay=no directory listing.

2. A paid listing in Yahoo, will do your page rank in Google no harm, which in turn will boost your Yahoo results.

Downsides are that you will now need to wait for Google to update to get Yahoo traffic, instead of the week or so that used to be the case.

Danny Sullivan has written a great article about this and the implications. You can read it at : sewatch.com/sereport/02/10-yahoo.html
There is a more comprehensive article for members (well worth the subscription fee).

Jim Banks
Web Diversity Limited
www.webdiversity.co.uk