Yahoo! shakes up its search engine to blow Google away...
It’s a game of ‘tags’ that has been on
ever since ’04, when Yahoo launched its very own algorithmic search engine. But that game, since inception, has always had a winner – Google. Always leading with a market share almost twice that of its closest rival – Yahoo, Google made search synonymous with its trade name that can today be found in the world’s leading dictionaries. But as they say, to play ‘his highness’ forever, one has to constantly weed out smaller men or competition, which Google was seen doing very well. Until the current quarter (on October, 2) when the gap shortened considerably in terms of experience, when using Yahoo’s all new search engine.
The ‘search engine’, a core competency of just a few amidst the vast confines of the World Wide Web, is perhaps the single most important factor that directs traffic in millions on websites hosting them. And the most sought after search engines belong to Google and Yahoo playing rivals, followed by the likes of Ask (formerly Ask Jeeves), Live Search (formerly MSN Search) and Alexa, a subsidiary of Amazon.com.
So while Yahoo having once again reiterated that it’s in no mood to play second fiddle, it’s Google that continues to outsmart all and here’s how. In Yahoo’s makeover with an in-built search assist that suggests various options while one keys in words, there seems a sort of a shift in line that suggests the next level in competition. After Yahoo, follows IAC and Microsoft, who have already revamped their searches earlier, in putting up such an application. Also on the search result page, below the box, there is an added box suggesting alternatives to key terms that the user had used earlier. Though helpful, it falls a shade lighter with the platform that Ask provides. Once used, the screen splits into three – with the search box at the left, results at the centre and images and encyclopaedic references to the right, hence deleting the need for the user to go back. As for Live Search, MSN’s cool new avatar, it matches exactly up to Yahoo’s new form with a difference in presentation, of course.
Another area where Google bamboozles the rest is in terms of properties that it owns and displays in tandem with search results. So when you type ‘BMW films’ on a Google page, along with the usual weblinks you also get to see a YouTube video link of BMW’s short films. Harnessing search and search results, Google further consolidates with its extremely successful contextual advertising platform – AdSense. Here again, it’s Yahoo which plays second fiddle with its own version of the relatively new Panama. So while Google pockets almost 75% of the $8 billion spent by marketers on search advertising, Yahoo gets a paltry 16.3%.
Sceptical, is what most seem when questioning Yahoo’s ambition over Google under today’s circumstances, especially on the search front. “The whole point is we want to get you from ‘to do’ to ‘done.’…. — their (users) intents expressed via a few keywords in a search box,” says Yahoo’s official blog. Sounds great and projects very well of Yahoo’s mission to conquer the top spot. That’s half the job done or is it??
It’s a game of ‘tags’ that has been on
ever since ’04, when Yahoo launched its very own algorithmic search engine. But that game, since inception, has always had a winner – Google. Always leading with a market share almost twice that of its closest rival – Yahoo, Google made search synonymous with its trade name that can today be found in the world’s leading dictionaries. But as they say, to play ‘his highness’ forever, one has to constantly weed out smaller men or competition, which Google was seen doing very well. Until the current quarter (on October, 2) when the gap shortened considerably in terms of experience, when using Yahoo’s all new search engine.The ‘search engine’, a core competency of just a few amidst the vast confines of the World Wide Web, is perhaps the single most important factor that directs traffic in millions on websites hosting them. And the most sought after search engines belong to Google and Yahoo playing rivals, followed by the likes of Ask (formerly Ask Jeeves), Live Search (formerly MSN Search) and Alexa, a subsidiary of Amazon.com.
So while Yahoo having once again reiterated that it’s in no mood to play second fiddle, it’s Google that continues to outsmart all and here’s how. In Yahoo’s makeover with an in-built search assist that suggests various options while one keys in words, there seems a sort of a shift in line that suggests the next level in competition. After Yahoo, follows IAC and Microsoft, who have already revamped their searches earlier, in putting up such an application. Also on the search result page, below the box, there is an added box suggesting alternatives to key terms that the user had used earlier. Though helpful, it falls a shade lighter with the platform that Ask provides. Once used, the screen splits into three – with the search box at the left, results at the centre and images and encyclopaedic references to the right, hence deleting the need for the user to go back. As for Live Search, MSN’s cool new avatar, it matches exactly up to Yahoo’s new form with a difference in presentation, of course.
Another area where Google bamboozles the rest is in terms of properties that it owns and displays in tandem with search results. So when you type ‘BMW films’ on a Google page, along with the usual weblinks you also get to see a YouTube video link of BMW’s short films. Harnessing search and search results, Google further consolidates with its extremely successful contextual advertising platform – AdSense. Here again, it’s Yahoo which plays second fiddle with its own version of the relatively new Panama. So while Google pockets almost 75% of the $8 billion spent by marketers on search advertising, Yahoo gets a paltry 16.3%.
Sceptical, is what most seem when questioning Yahoo’s ambition over Google under today’s circumstances, especially on the search front. “The whole point is we want to get you from ‘to do’ to ‘done.’…. — their (users) intents expressed via a few keywords in a search box,” says Yahoo’s official blog. Sounds great and projects very well of Yahoo’s mission to conquer the top spot. That’s half the job done or is it??
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