Yahoo moving away from search?

[salmo]

"Search and directory is an increasingly small part of what we do, though it remains the entry point for new users on to our network," says James Bilefield, business development director at Yahoo UK in an article in the Guardian Unlimited (www.guardian.co.uk/online/story/0,3605,708231,00.html).

If that is the case and in view of recent research that shows Yahoo trailing Google with only 20% of search volume as opposed to Google's 46%, I am asking myself whether it is worthwhile paying the $299 review fee.

I still see quite a lot of traffic coming from Yahoo, but nothing like in the past. I would be interested to read others thoughts on this.

[alex_h]

It's a financial analysis. The original plan was just to sell targetting banner ads on search results. Yahoo has heavily diversified into a large destination. Their strategy is to use search OR other services to bring you into the Yahoo network, and provide many basic services there. They want to be a starting point and destination.

They COULD simply drop the directory and only use Google results, though that seems unlikely. The Yahoo directory is pretty good, and it is important to keeping their search customers.

If you are running a commercial business, a Yahoo listing can pay for itself in days. It's a cost of doing business on the Internet.

The $300/listing/year no doubt makes Yahoo money, so I can't see them dropping this service. They also want to power their own search because they want to inject their own sites into the results. I suppose they could list Yahoo matches followed by Google results, but who knows.

Alex

[angiolo]

> If you are running a commercial business, a Yahoo listing can pay for itself in days.

I totally agree.

In countries where it still is a one-time fee, it is a bargain. In some countries it is still free.