Yahoo Creeps Ever Closer To The Google Cachet

Is Yahoo lockstepped in a Follow-The-Leader death march?

First Yahoo stripped down their search.yahoo.com home page to what could only be referred to as a "Google-like" simplicity.

Then they changed from their "classic" twenty results per page to ten.(Well, that was probably to increase their Overture PPC ads exposure on the flagship site, understandable and forgiveable).

But now, for the first time in Yahoo history, their logo has been "seasonalized", just like... Google.

To me this means the Google is really hurting Yahoo, and they're running scared.

When the Google IPO was imminent, people speculated that Google's policy making decisions would be hampered and become more... Yahoo-like.

Where is Yahoo's innovation? "Search is search", you say, "Who cares if they started making holiday logos"? Take a look at Amazon's A9 - tons of new and innovative personalization features that many SE experts feel are the future of search... and the punchline is all these new features are layered on top of Google's existing technology.

More than anything this latest Yahoo stunt, reminds me of Altavista's failed Google knock-off - RagingSearch.com (link is to archive.org, since the domain is now a squatted PPC directory feed). Irony, noted, naturally.... Altavista.com went through a series of ownership changes, and is now owned by none-other than Yahoo, Inc.

What is evident is that Yahoo is trying hard to grab some of Google's "mindshare". If Yahoo wants to truly compete with Google (and any future competitors) it is going to take a lot more than a spooky Halloween themed animated gif.

No One Asks Jeeves

Ask - AJ - Ask Jeeves wherefore art thou?

Jeeves is not a search engine - it is a Pay Per Click Feed site, supplemented by search results.

Here are my summary referer stats for one of my busier sites, since Tuesday November 13, 2001 until today, Friday October 29, 2004:

• google.com 639290 (66%)


• yahoo 168895 (17%)


• msn 103808 (10%)


• altavista 25908 (2%)


• aol.com 16210 (1%)


• askjeeves.com 5094 (0%)


• netscape.com 2375 (0%)


• lycos 786 (0%)


• goto.com 600 (0%)


• alltheweb.com 543 (0%)


• iwon.com 417 (0%)


• mamma.com 382 (0%)


• hotbot.com 283 (0%)


• excite.com 130 (0%)


• looksmart.com 104 (0%)


• infospace.com 85 (0%)


• teoma.com 79 (0%)


• go2net.com 75 (0%)


• euroseek.net 62 (0%)


• go.com 16 (0%)


• webcrawler.com 16 (0%)

And you say, "Hey that's not so bad, AJ is beating Lycos and Mamma and even Netscape".

But wait, there's a catch. If I remove my Adwords tracking code from the logs, Ask referrals plummet to 1291.

Since November 2001.

Slightly more than 400 per year.

But wait, let's think about this a bit more. That means that 3083 people came to my site thanks to the Adwords campaign I started in November 2003.

But wait, there's more. This site has been #1, #2 or #3 for every major search term (according to Overture) since the site's inception, usually first and second place.

You just can't say that the niche just isn't searched for in Jeeves, because my Adwords traffic for the campaign is decent.

Am I unique? No, I am afraid not. One of my colleagues has a site in Ask via PositionTech's paid inclusion service. In 12 months, his term, #1 in the Ask Organic search, got ZERO traffic. These terms generate over 5,000 Adwords impressions per month.

Ask.com just doesn't have organic traffic - it's all being sucked away to their Google Adwords partner feed.

Ask is publically traded. Ask is publically hyped. But Ask just doesn't deliver.

Google Desktop Search

Google steps on Microsoft's toes with a desktop search app for windows users.

Find your email, files, web history and chats instantly
View web pages you've seen, even when you're not online
Search as easily as you do on Google
Google Desktop Search finds:

• Outlook / Outlook Express


• Word


• AOL Instant Messenger


• Excel


• Internet Explorer


• PowerPoint


• Text

Good, I was tired of 45 minute searches with the integrated Windows search tool with it not finding the file in the end.

http://desktop.google.com/