Has Yahoo messed up?

I still have sites that rank well in yahoo and I have never paid them anything

 

Yeap, me too, one site without coop rank well, another with coop - dropped.

 

The answer to the original question, has Yahoo messed up, is YES! I think it wont be long before Yahoo traffic falls to next to none and MSN takes over as the big number 2 search engine.

 

From one of my sites for yesterday;

Google with 8364 referrals
MSN with 1409 referrals
AOL with 528 referrals
Yahoo with 102 referrals
Ask Jeeves with 20 referrals
All the web with 2 referrals
Lycos with 1 referrals

Ya-Who?

 

Judging by MSN's results Google should throw a big party if that happens.

 

I think Bill has the money and the desire to do it.

 

Google thinks they are untouchable. It is a scary proposition when virtually 100% of your business is built around search and PPC revenue. Microsoft certainly doesn't have to backbone their company on search. Even with all of the money Google raised in the IPO they still can't even match Microsoft $0.50 per dollar. And they have no where near the connections that Microsoft has. Don't get me wrong, Google is a better search engine by far right now. But it is only because they had nearly a decade head start. MSN version 1.0 is a LOT better than Google 1.0 was.

MSN isn't trying to rule the search world in a year. They know they can outlast, outspend and out innovate everyone else in 5-10 years. The only thing that will be able to save Google long term is if Balmer and Gates decide they don't want the search industry and I just don't see that happening. Most of their R&D is now in search and they've moved most of their best guys to the Search division. They are gunnning for the top and I think it is foolish and naive for anyone to bet against them being that they own the desktop, now have the largest ISP on the planet (surpassing AOL), have the second biggest portal MSN.com, and have more money than anyone else.

I think Larry and Page should cash out. It was a good ride. They'll have their place in history. But now it is time to step aside because they don't have what it takes to play with the big boys. You got to give them credit though, they've tried. Gmail all but flopped with the GB free email. Froogle was a disaster. Their desktop search is 8 years behind Yahoo's technology.

Google still DOES have better results, Adsense, and Adwords. To Microsoft, that seems like an easy thing to solve given time and money.

 

Has gmail flopped?

 

You didn't hear? Gmail was suppose to take up to 30-50% of Yahoo's and Hotmail's email subscribers by offering more space for free. It took all of 72 hours before Yahoo and everyone else upped their storage space. So, yes, for the money invested into the system it was a complete failure. Must we also forget that Yahoo and MSN have MILLIONS using their instant messengers? Those two companies are embedded into online culture and it has nothing to do with search. They would have a customer base even if they stopped offering search altogether. That is a luxery Google does not have.

It is actually funny when people still see Google as being this ever powerful company. Wasn't it just 2 years ago that they had 80+% marketshare? Now they are down to 45%. That is still more than MSN and Yahoo but Google is already declining. They are certainly not GAINING marketshare. If AOL dropped them, the only thing Google would have left would be Google. I'm not preaching the demise of the company. I guess I am just amazed at how many very intelligent people in the search community are drinking the Google Koolaid right now. Kinda reminds me of the diehard Apple (Machintosh) users that can't let go of the nostalgia they had 15 years ago. Now the only thing keeping Apple alive is Microsoft (being a major owner) and the IPod which is now starting to get their ass kicked by Creative Labs.

Google is the big fish right now, and for that reason we should keep optimizing for them, but if I am creating a long term strategy for the next 5 years, I am going to feel a lot more comfortable placing my money on MSN to win.

The best thing Google could do would be to burry their differences with Yahoo, merge the two companies and give MSN a run for their money. I'd say the'd have a darn good chance to come out on top. Certainly it would make Yahoo and Google WAY more powerful. Think of Google integrating with Yahoo's customer base and applications. Think of Yahoo now having a jump start on search technology. Imagine the combined resources of both datacenters?

Anyway, just my thoughts.

 

Give MSN a run for their money now that makes me laugh.
MS might own the desktop in the western world - bit f'in wow. Bill G isn't a stupid person, far far from it. He knows that computers and the internet are still very much in their infancy. The hardware isn't mature, the software isn't mature. He knows full well that by the time the internet and computers are all over the globe that the market is going to be many many times larger than it is today. Most of Asia is yet to come on line - but it will do. What money/power he has now will be nought compared to what he could have. But hey guess what - he doesn't own the desktop in the Asian countries. Where are the future internet majority, not in the West that's for sure.

MSN might take a big share of the pie, but they've got a hell of a lot of catching up to do first.

 

If they are actually penalizing sites basked in inbounds then this will add a new weapon to a black hat's arsenal. With every step forward they take to combat serp spam, they take 3 giant steps back by opening other holes that are potentially easier to manipulate.

As far as blog spamming dying, this can not be further than the truth. There are literally 100's of thousands dead message boards and blogs that have pretty much turned into ffa pages. Many of them untouched by spammers which makes them a nice target. Having the no follow tag out there only works if the webmasters actually update their blog software to put this tag in place. My sectors are still dominated by blog spammers.. But what I'm seeing its the small time spammers with links in the 1k range that are ranking.. I noticed that the major spammers have dropped like a rock..

 

And Gmail isn't even available for the general public considering it's still beta, nor has it even been promoted all that heavily.

Also, MS has been around for years where as Google has been around the fraction of the time.

Google's stock continue to climb. They continue to innovate on products that have been around for awhile (Google maps?) and will continue to do so.

They're expanding left and right. They've had been public for almost a year now. Give them some time before you start thinking MS will take over the search market.

 

That pretty much confirms what I have been suspecting. I had a coop site that was ranking in the top ten for many keywords completely dropped from Yahoo in the last couple of weeks. I have other sites which have a lower weight coop weight pointing to them that still rank high in yahoo, but they do not run coop ads.

This site ranks well in google and msn, but with digitalpoint being dropped, and I think the charity site experiment, it seems to indicate that yahoo has decided to penalize sites under certain circumstances. It might not be the coop per se, but some formula based on number of certain types of links. I was thinking about experimenting with not running coop sites on this site, but since the charity site wasn't running the coop, it would seem that the penalty is based on incoming links (and I had a hard time believing that could happen, but the more I read.....) and yes, I know there are sites that haven't been affected.

Yahoo wasn't a major source of traffic for me, but it sure would be nice if Yahoo figures out they made a big mistake with all the spammy sites that seem to be ranking well.

 

Catching up? Please, I beg you to tell me what company on the Earth (not just the US) that Microsoft has to "catch up" to. And yes, they are HEAVILY invested overseas ALREADY including the asian markets. In fact their first operating system ever 15+ years ago first debuted on NEC machines overseas.

As far as Google expanding and innovating. I'm not saying they're not TRYING. If you want to get down to brass balls, the FACT is that they aren't a portal. They are a search engine. That's it. Google Maps is a nice attempt. I can't blame them for wanting to move in that direction. But they aren't developing nor have develped the technology of supplying search results to wireless users. They are merely shifting more towards geo-targeted results whether it is wireless or not. That is the point of Google Maps by the way. Not just to give you a map of your area using GPS but to actually provide you localized results from companies IN your area. You don't think MSN is doing the same thing? MSN is already working on building the biggest advertising network on the planet (and I'm not talking about just AdCenter). For nearly a decade they have invested close to 1 Billion in IPTV, they are going to be the bridge between the Telco/Cable/Satelite companies and hundreds of millions of online users. It is an unlimited delivery outlet. Do you actually think they can't piggy back search and content on that network?

If you look at it objectively, Google has 3 clear advantages.
1) AdWords. Though Overture at Yahoo and AdCenter at MSN will fill out the competition in the PPC market.
2) AdSense. No doubt, Google is leading the way. But mostly because there isn't a quality alternative. With MSN and Yahoo offering their contextual ad network in the near future, Google will have to do something pretty special not to lose marketshare. I know it wont happen overnight, nothing does. But a competitor's entry into any market has an effect on profits. And when your competitor is as big as Yahoo and MSN, it doesn't exact HELP you sleep at night.
3) Search Technology. Google had a headstart on everyone in next generation search technology. But as with most things in this world, it is only a matter of time and money to match them.

People who laugh at MSN are looking 1 foot in front of their face. I know the search results aren't as good but they haven't even been up a year. I remember Google in their first year. They were MUCH worse.

Listen to Balmer's keynote address at the MSN Strategic Account Summit in March.

http://advertising.msn.com/docs/SteveB_YusufM_Keynote_300k.wmv

It clearly solidifies the notion that MSN is going to do whatever it takes to take over this industry, period. I find it hard to look at the facts and see anyone that can stop them over the next 5-10 years.

I actually like Google, but I'm also a realist. It isn't hard to see where technology is headed, how search will fit into it, and which companies are better positioned to lead.

 

ehh, you ask who MS have to catch up to, then further on say that their search results aren't as good - you answered your own Q. We are talking MSN here - not MS in general.
MS in general tend to play catch up with most companies - if they can't catch up on their own, they buy the company. Pehaps not the most ethical strategy, but it works.

As you keep pointing out, MSN search has been live for not very long. But how ling have they been developing it -- that's not something we know. For all we know it could have been 5 years in development to get to the stage it's at now.
5->10 years ago people made exactly the same comments about IBM - no one will catch them. 5->10 years is an absolute eon in the internet, G's not even been around much longer than 5 years so far and it's only been public for 12 months or so.
As to what's said in a keynote speech - couldn't really careless (personal opinion), a keynote speech is nothing more than a marketting exercise. MS might well be investing heavily overseas, so what. They donot have the luxury of 99.99% desktop monopoly (or whatever it actually is) outsite of the western world and they know it. They don't have the monopoly they wanted in the server markets - they are growing but much slower than they're happy with. I could list many many companies that MS are playing catchup with, they've spread into so many areas that they actually have a hell of a lot of competitors.
I don't laugh at MSN I welcome more competition in the SE market. As for Yahoo's adsense competitor, I've been hearing talk about this for over 12 month now and have yet to see a product and looking at their current search results, I don't care to guess what the advertising product would produce.
MS have their fingers in so many pies, I would even like to guess at which areas they'll actually end up being successful in - 1Billion in a decade in TV terms is not a large amount of money (just as it's not that much money to MS). They are doing what we all talk about, diversify. If one area starts taking off then you put more money and people into it and see if you can make money at it. OK, MS play that game on a way larger scale than we do, but in essence it's still the same game.
Watch all the speeches made by the various executives over the years, and you'd start believing that they've got enough money to dominate everything. They haven't. They're just positioning themselves where they can best take advantage of things.
MS may well be the biggest around at the moment, but they aren't big enough to dominate everything that want to. So they're positioning themselves so that when they spot the next explosion they can take full advantage of it from the start.
For years MS have been playing catch up on the web. Why, because they wrongly decided it wasn't going to be a big thing. Give 'em their dues, the do adjust damn quick when they decide to. But as they get bigger and bigger, that adjustment is going to take longer and longer - hence why they spread themselves into so many areas, they know they have to spot the next explosion early.

If you think MS is a big powerful company now, you could well be rethinking in 5 or 10 years time. The 'net is the biggest thing ever to happen to business, and we've only seen the first wave. When the 2nd and 3rd hit they will produce opportunities way in excess of anything seen so far - I think I took this pretty much directly from a speech given by Bill G although he'll have used better words . If MS aren't positioned correctly for the next wave, then there will be another company just as big as MS.

 

Rather then keep going back and forth with you, it may be better to leave it. It seems we are both saying the same thing, just arriving at our opinions in two different ways. I know Google is the biggest now and that MSN is best "positioned" to make a major move in the future. You seem to also be acknowledging that MSN certainly has more resources to grow in the search industry but we have yet to see how those resources are utilized.

I think Google has reached a level that we can safely say they wont completely disappear. I don't think they are necessarily the next Looksmart, Lycos, Excite, or Altavista (all of which trying to become a major search engine at some point). I guess I'm just hoping that Google can make the necessary moves to really compete with MSN in the future. I don't think it is the other way around.

Again, a Yahoo/Google merger would be MASSIVE. It would compeltely change the landscape of the Internet as we know it. Not sure how they would integrate but it would seem to make more sense to shift Google's technology to Yahoo rather than try to create google.com into a portal to compete with Yahoo.com.

Google will need to find a way to keep growing their alliances because with Longhorn integrating MSN search right into the desktop, many people will use it out of sheer convienence. The average internet user is not very savvy. Most can't even keep spyware from being installed on their browser. Heck, my mom doesn't even know you can type a URL into the address bar go right to the site. You know how many searches there are for "www.amazon.com" or "www.ebay.com". I think it is a major step that MS is taking with desktop search in the OS. Sure Yahoo and Google have or will have Desktop search, but it requires a user to make the effort to go and get it then know how to install it. I just can't see that competing with the MSN desktop search when it is already built in.

 

The daftest thing I ever saw was someone actually search for google. I think they were using askjeeves at the time. But yes, there are many people who don't know that you can type a url directly. Also many that didn't know you could just hit 'return' in the address bar - that's why MS actually put the 'GO' button there in the first place, cos users are stupid.

 

By the way, we kinda got off topic. Has anyone seen any update on Yahoo yet? I'm in California and haven't seen any changes yet.

 

yahoo is making moves on my key words,

 

No changes here though I got a few visitors from Y