Yahoo rolling out more Inktomi?

percentages going up

[EquityMind]

I posted before that I was seeing Inktomi in my Yahoo SERPS and it appeared to be IP based since it was definately Ink at home and Google at my office computer. This has been the case for over a month now. However when I look at the percentages of traffic given over time, I noticed a huge shift today:

Last Monday:

Google: 43% of traffic
Yahoo: 20% of traffic

Today:

Google: 34.7 %
Yahoo: 29.8 %

This is a huge discrepancy considering that this is a site with several million unique visitors per month.

Is anyone else getting percentage of traffic discrepancies today like this? Is Yahoo rolling out more Inktomi as they slowly phase out Google?

EquityMind

[viggen]

One of my sites has a penalty by Google and i get 0% referal from Google on this site, however I am very good ranked at Inktomi.

For the last couple of weeks i get loads of traffic from Yahoo (which i shouldn't because Google), so there must be some more testing with Inktomi results. Good for me. :)

The traffic is increasing steadily every day, all referals are from search.yahoo.com. (on a site note Ask traffic increased conciderably too)

[satanclaus]

I'm seeing a similar shift EM. Yahoo now accounts for 1/3 of my traffic. Up from around 1/5

[curlykarl]

I'm seeing the same :)

MSN has brought me more referals today than Google!

Karl

[kanetrain]

I still see Google here... but that doesn't mean it's not INK in many other areas.
I'm actually shocked that they would use Ink right now. Ink can't index dynamic links correctly and they just penalized a bunch of their PFI customers for no reason. You would think that Yahoo would want to resolve these issues before they opened the floodgates.

[EquityMind]

MSN is the same, dont expect to see a shift there until the LookSmart bounce next Jan. Yahoo is on day 2 of adding about 8-9% more traffic while Google has lost a similiar percentage.

EquityMind

[David_D]

Are you all from the US or is this happening in the UK too?

[viggen]

Are you all from the US or is this happening in the UK too?

I am from Austria, I don't see results when i look for them on yahoo, but i see the referals in my log. (still increasing daily)

[EquityMind]

I am in Southern CA in the US.

[panic]

I am in Southern CA in the US.

Same here, but I'm still seeing Google results :(

[EquityMind]

Just checked again, I'm still getting Ink on my home computer, and last time I checked yesterday, I was getting Google on my work computer. Both PC's are in Irvine, CA. The test is obviously IP based.

[panic]

The test is obviously IP based.

Or ISP based. Are both your home and work computers on the same ISP?

[EquityMind]

No, they are not - completely seperate. I'm still seeing higher than normal Yahoo referrals, but more along the lines of 5% now versus 9% stated previously combined with a slight drop at Google.

EquityMind

[markis00]

Let's all cross our fingers and hope Y! is switching to Ink results soon! I heard this was happening in June but if they want to do it sooner, by all means

Google has really stepped on most of us SEO'ers anyways

[Namaste]

like I said in a post long back, customer facing companies only make creeping changes.

Whoever thought Yahoo would "push the button" has it all wrong...it's always turn the know.

This is the same thing we see with Google and their change in the ranking algo.

As far as traffic goes, my ratios with Google:Yahoo:MSN are as they were

I also find it funny that you guys are reporting more traffic from Yahoo than Google...that may be so, but it has nothing to do with the back-end engine that Yahoo is using! It has to do with no of people using Yahoo.

Whether Yahoo is using inktomi can only be determined through an analysis of Yahoo SERPS and not the refferal percentages

[kanetrain]

I'm not a SEO... just a site owner and surfer. I couldn't disagree more with the desire to have Ink at Yahoo. I've always thought Ink was a 2nd tier search engine and I think their results are rather poor. I've been saying this for over 8 months. But it's worse now than it ever has been.

I think Yahoo is just doing some tests. I noticed INK results at Yahoo on my home ISP about 2 months ago. They'll probably continue testing until they get it figured out. I think they'd be nuts to realease INK in it's current condition.

Most internet users know that there are more search engines out there than just Yahoo. If they can't find what they are looking on thier first or second search they'll just move on to something else (see: the fate of alta vista, dog pile, and other engines of the late 90's). Yahoo's greedy and overanxious at times, but they are also smart enough to realize that relevancy = $. I'm not sure how others feel, but IMHO it's a lot harder find relevant results on Ink than on Google.

A search engine gets traffic if they can return results with relevant info. That's why Google is the king of search and that's why Yahoo has made so much money off of search lately (they use Google results). If Yahoo releases a search engine like the current INK to the general population, your average user is going to get frustrated and move on to something else.

[Luke_SR]

Yahoo has ink results here. Fort lauderdale, FL.

[Luke_SR]

Have to correct myself.. I think the difference I see on yahoo is because results are served from a different google data-center then the default one I see in google. I don't think this is Inktomi results.

[steveb]

My main keyword has had the exact same oddball results since August... not Google, not Ink, but something else. These results relied heavily on the Directory (and were more Googlish than Inkish). Seven of the top eight were the "most popular" in the Directory.

Today the results reverted to Google.

[Oaf357]

I'm seeing an increase in traffic from MSN, Yahoo, and AltaVista (among others).

I think more people are diversifying their quest for information by using different search engines. I don't think this has anything to do with Yahoo phasing in Inktomi but more to do with Google's Florida update and other SEs taking advantage of Google's pseudo slopiness.

Since the Florida update I've seen a dramatic increase in crawling from search engines other than Google and that increases ones traffic as their pages enter SERPs.

Sorry to bust anyone's bubble but that's my 2 cents.

[Jane_Doe]

I have a site that lost some good keyword rankings in Google after Florida but still does great in Ink, and a new site that is not in Ink but ranks well in Google.

Today there was a spike in orders on the does-good-in-Ink site and a dip in orders on the not-in-Ink site, which leads me to suspect that Yahoo may have shifted a bit more of their customers over to Ink recently.

[ranksmith]

In India, It's still going with Google.

[greyhat]

On one computer here I'm seeing yahoo results that are not Google, nor inktomi pure...it's something else...inkhoo?

[seoboy]

we run paid inclusion campaigns which generate specific logs for inktomi-based inclusion. i'm seeing search.yahoo.com referrals in those logs. that traffic can only be coming from our inktomi paid inclusion, so there's obviously something going on.

i've heard suggestions that yahoo's long-term plan may be neither to keep nor abandon google, but instead to "fuse" google results with Ink's PFI results, much like they "fused" their directory data with google's SERP in the algorithm a while back. this approach may make sense, as it wouldnt risk relevancy drops with a pure Ink SERP. it's also worth keeping in mind that yahoo owns a big chunk of google. it may be in their interest to maintain the relationship at least until google goes public...

fwiw, we're currently averaging about 30 yahoo clicks/day from PFI for Dec , out of ~2500 clicks/day avg = or 1% of total traffic.

seoboy

[figment88]

Do not fool yourself that pfi specific urls can only come from the se you supplied them with. Many se's distribute their SERPs to all sorts of engines in all sorts of fashions (e.g. XML). The links than get put into webpages and can be spidered by another se.

Just today for example I saw a SERP on MSN that had my site near the top and it listed it again in about 15th position using a url I only use with google adwords.

[dillonstars]

Completely stable traffic from Yahoo! here since the beginning of November.

I thought there were signs that Yahoo were testing Altavista in their serps? did they just abandon that idea?

[shaadi]

I am from India, Yahoo still showing SERPs from www-in [www-in.google.com] since last 2 days.

[lawman]

In the great state of Georgia (USA), county of Lowndes, city of Valdosta, using Bellsouth DSL, as of two minutes ago, Y! search was definitely showing Google.

That is all.

lawman

[andy_boyd]

Still seeing pure Google - no change at all. Just paid for inclusion to Ink, might as well get ready for a change now rather than regretting it later.

County Antrim, Northern Ireland.

[WebmasterFisherman]

Still seeing Yahoogle here in Eastern Europe.
Same post-florida SERPS from www-in mailnly.