Yahoo! Denies 2nd Place in Search Market
In Yahoo’s search blog, we found that Yahoo! denies that they are satisfied with a 2nd place in the search market.
Currently, Google is the market leader in search, with 47.7% of all search request from the web. Followed by 21.8% from Yahoo!
As an active web publisher, I use the search engines every day. My search queries for 1 day is 10 times more than a normal internet users will search in one week. And I can’t deny the fact that Yahoo! still need to catch up in this race to dominate the search pie.
I believe there are areas Yahoo! need to improve when it comes to web search:
- People Search - I search for my friends, celebrities and people I know. Sometimes I even search into www.friendster.com and other niche engines that I can find useful information about people. Google is very strong here.
- Speed of Indexing Web Pages - This is one area Yahoo! needs to catch up. I have been observing how Googlebot, MsnBot and Inktomi index my sites. One of my sites contain about 80 pages. While Google and MSN have finished indexing all the pages 3 weeks ago, Yahoo! has only indexed 43 pages.
- Ranking of New Web Sites - 1) Google do not allow new web sites to acheive high ranking directly. This is a good way to prevent spam. However, Google gives indirect ranking for new, but good quality sites. Backlinks from reputable sites can help new sites to achieve top 10 in a short while, indirectly. 2) MSN can also spot good quality new sites in a short time. 3) Yahoo! takes much longer, sometimes more than 6 months.
Overall, the 3 engines are able to identify important, and brandname sites. But Google goes down to the details. I believe this is what differentiate the leader from the rest.