Why is Google showing Yahoo results?

[superclown2]

I'm seeing more and more results from uk.answers.yahoo.com in the Google Serps here in the UK. These are usually in position 2 and sometimes in position 3 as well. Since they have multiple links, this means that for some searches there are almost as many results from Yahoo as there are from Google.

Has the world's greatest search engine given up the battle already, and accepted that searchers need to see Y's results too, if they are to find what they are looking for?

[tedster]

Ranking a Yahoo Answers page is not the same as showing their search results. Yahoo Answers are published content and certainly can be a relevant result.

[superclown2]

Sure, but I'm still wondering why Yahoo 'content' is shown on Google. It's not as if it is a high quality resource which deserves a wider audience; most of the answers I looked at are trite and filled with factual inaccuracies so to see so many of them occupying such a large slice of the Google SERPs in such a prominent position is hardly doing much to enhance the Google brand. All it means is that there is a load more junk to skip through before we can get to relevant results.

On the first page on a subject I'm very interested in there are a total of 16 links (excluding the ads of course). The first one is a Google search result then the next two positions are taken by Yahoo answers with a total of eight links; half the links on the page; filled with uninformed verbal meanderings. The mind boggles.

[walkman]

Actually some are very useful. Yes they do scrape a lot of content--which sucks for the content owner but is good for the asker--but sometimes several people join and answer.

[tedster]

The initial criticism that started this thread is pretty much a cheap shot: "Has the world's greatest search engine given up the battle already." What should Google do? Blacklist their competitors' URLs?

There are content pages on Google that are without a doubt the best result for a query - for example, swfobject or mod_pagespeed. Yahoo and Bing very professionally return Google's pages as #1.

[BeeDeeDubbleU]

Yes but I think the OP's point is that Yahoo's results are often not the best result. I have been seeing the same recently - more often when doing technical research. Many or perhaps most of Yahoo Answers do not deserve their position. There are often much more relevant results below them.

As superclown2 says ...

most of the answers I looked at are trite and filled with factual inaccuracies

[chrisv1963]

Yes they do scrape a lot of content--which sucks for the content owner but is good for the asker

Correct, I sent more than 100 DMCAs in one week for content scraped from my website and posted on Yahoo Answers. Some were posted with false links as source => others doing link building with my content.

Yahoo removed the content, but it took me hours/days of work to find and report it.

The bad news is that Google seems to give priority to Yahoo Answers, and not to the source of the content.

[superclown2]

The initial criticism that started this thread is pretty much a cheap shot: "Has the world's greatest search engine given up the battle already." What should Google do? Blacklist their competitors' URLs?

I think that we Brits and you Americans aren't just separated by a common language. Each of us has our own ideas of humour (or should that be humor) which is baffling to the other too.

I don't think that they should necessarily blacklist a competitor's URLs - although it would be understandable if they did - but dubious quality content at the most mundane level (yes, from a competitor) with multiple links in position two and three? What next, Facebook pages at numbers three and four? Tweets at five, six and seven?

Google is becoming less and less useful to serious researchers. This may or may not be deliberate but the long term effect, if this continues, will not be good for this company.

[kellyman]

Us Brits are getting weird results, many threads on this lately, im sure there are lots of testing by Google going on which will be resolved, i posted a few days back in regard to way to many searches from out side the UK, but more testing is showing the people are from the UK but google is showing the referer as a different location

Somthing is not working as it is and im sure it will settle down soon

[BeeDeeDubbleU]

This may or may not be deliberate but the long term effect, if this continues, will not be good for this company.

Google started off as a serious search engine whose main objective was to be better at finding relevant results. When they floated with their IPO in 2004 their main objective changed overnight.

By that time they already had what amounted to a virtual monopoly in search and since then no one (including Bing) has been able to make any decent inroads. The only way that they would be damages would be if the public turned away from them but the public gets what the public wants and currently it would seem that the public want Google.

(Unfortunately.)

[superclown2]

Now then; here they are, showing poor quality content from a competitor in very prominent positions. On the face of it, this is not logical.

So; I wonder if the anti-trust investigations have anything to do with this? Or am I getting over-cynical in my old age?

[tedster]

I'd say you're attributing too much conscious intention to an extremely complex machine algorithm working on an immense data set - and yes, maybe your tin foil is a little too tight, too.

[netmeg]

Google has never even ranked itself #1 for search engine in its own search engine. They've always let the others guys in. I can just imagine the stink that would arise if they hadn't.

I wouldn't overthink it. In the grand scheme of things, there are a lot more important things to wonder and worry about.

[rlange]

I did a search on Google yesterday and a Yahoo! Answers page that was asking pretty much the same question I had appeared at #7 (and was the first relevant result, too).

The only answer to that question was "google it".

Brilliant.

--
Ryan