With Yahoo and MSN, I can perform SEO tasks using whitehat methods and get sites ranked fairly high. It takes constant tweaking, but the results are satisfying to my clients, and I don't have to go to extreme techniques to get listed higher. It is a straightforward process to get good relevant results when optimizing for Yahoo & MSN. I have many clients who are getting good traffic and decent sales off their Yahoo & MSN referrals because they have good SERP placement for their keywords. Google on the other hand seems to be moving in the other direction. Every time they change their algo, a lot of relevant sites drop way down the SERPs. More and more garbage sites are appearing in the first or second page results. I don't have that issue as much with Yahoo or MSN. So many webmasters are out there gaming the system, that it's become almost a farce. I suppose it's the same problem Microsoft has as a strong market leader - they are targeted by the unethical to take advantage of their weaknesses. Don't get me wrong, I still get good search results on some Google searches, but if I need anything business-wise (at least half of my searches are business related), I use Yahoo or MSN. Memo to Google: if I wanted to search Wikipedia, I would have. If I'd needed a telephone number from a directory, I'd have searched in a directory. If I need an image, I'll search for an image. If I need a video, I'll search for a video. When I need to find a website, I USED to use Google. It's frustrating from both a webmaster and user point of view to try to sift through 5 or 6 pages or search results for the right website. I still love Google, but I just don't understand why they're going in the direction they are.
they are getting focussed on the money and becoming as big as possible...and forgetting why they started in the first place... it is quite sad, and I also have noticed everything you just said...i've been using yahoo quite a bit more than usually lately.
I hadn't really noticed how much I use Yahoo until the last week or so. It's been a subconscious thing until now. It is sad...
same goes for me...i usually only use yahoo when I can't find what i'm looking for in the first few pages of google... and to demonstrate how much i've been doing that lately...i've just realized that I have yahoo up in my quick links bar on firefox now...i don't even remember putting it there
I haven't actually used yahoo for anything before, but i might very well start. Everyone knows about wikipedia.com. It would be better for everyone if they integrated it like they do / did with answers.com / dictionary.com and let us search for something on there when we feel we need to.
That's funny, I have Yahoo on my Firefox links bar too! (but I do remember putting it there ) I used to have Google as my home page. It loaded quickly and provided a good resource for browsing. I've now gone to a _blank page as my home page. Google is starting to load crap into their home page. (BTW, anyone who uses MSN.com as their home page is nuts - it takes 30 minutes to load up all the content they have on it).
No way Just set this as your homepage: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random Sometimes you get crappy towns of 200 people, more recently i learned about locking nuts and a greek death metal band called rotting christ
I didn't even know you could use that to get on a random Wikipedia page, lol. But yeah I think Google is giving Wikipedia too much attention, it's around the first result for just about everything right now.
The good thing about google giving wikipedia credit is that we can add our own links I have a poetry website and have a backlink from practically every poet on wikipedia.
Well Google is a joint stock company and is run for profit motive. Therefore they do not care about anyone out there and do not like providing premium services for free. Ever since ad words and ad sense came along Google has never been the same with its ranking system.
Maybe they like bad results and good sites listed in adwords. This makes people click on paid ads more. I agree google search on alot of terms is junk. I even have seen just forums or message boards for some. A few sites i know have been gone for close to a year rank well in google for some good terms.
So what's next? Google algorithms are going to start give preferential placement for pages with adsense on them?
Alot of forums can provide equally as good content; if not better than blogs. There's no reason for them to be discounted from search results.
wouldn't surprise me in the least...though i don't think Matt will be posting in his blog about that one
I can second a lot of what you're saying there. Wikipedia : I just go straight to wikipedia nowadays for anything technical or any curiosity....why? Because google will list them first for any such term anyway.