Google Not Good Enough for Yahoo Search?
Barry has been doing some searches on Yahoo for the ‘terms’ Google and Google.com which result in a Yahoo YaHandJob inserting a Yahoo Shortcut which suggests searching the web with Yahoo. My guess is that over 70% of the time when a user types the term “Google” into Yahoo they’re not looking up information on Google but looking for the site itself for searching.
I’ve noticed the same behavior from some of my family members who automatically type in the sites they are looking for; such as eBay.com and Ask.com, on their default Yahoo or MyYahoo homepage (which is default via their HP/Compaq or after downloading Yahoo Messenger).
Mr. Schwartz of Search Engine Roundtable agrees;
But maybe Yahoo! has research showing that Yahoo! users don’t always know when they are searching. So when they do a search for Google or Google.com at Yahoo! Search, Yahoo! needs to remind them, that they also have a search engine. Sounds kind of dumb, but trust me, it makes sense.What is interesting is that Yahoo! does it for Google keywords but not for MSN Search, Ask.com, etc.
Barry says that he’s noticed a drop in referrals from Yahoo News for the term ‘Google’, so evidently researchers are also searching for Google information within Yahoo and being served the Shortcut, which probably distracts them from their original search intent.
