Yahoo! Showing Ink (part II?)

First time for me

[werty]

So I was sitting here doing a search on google, then did the search on yahoo and got 2 completely different results.

The powered by google on the bottom of yahoo! was also missing.

I placed the yahoo results next to Ink's pure results and they were identical other than Yahoo removing a japanese site, and using its directory titles vs the title tags on the pages.

I tried it on Opera and got Google results.
I tried it on on 3 other machines at the office(IE) and got google results.

On my computer I was logged into Yahoo!

Anyone else seeing it?

[CygnusX1]

I've seen the same thing, but its harder for me to pick this up on different keywords and keyword phrases. I usually do well on both Google and Ink.

But I do think you are correct.

CygnusX1

[WebGuerrilla]

Yahoo is occasionally passing a special cookie to logged in users that allows them to see the new listings.

I logged into my email account yesterday and then was able to see the new results. For about a two hour period, you could delete your cookies and see Google. Then you could log into Yahoo and the results would change.

Unfortunately, it appears that they only server the cookie short periods of time. I ended up deleting my cookies on my desktop and I can no longer see the Ink results.

But I still have the cookie on my laptop, so I've been able to spend the whole day comparing the two. So far, I'm pretty impressed. And the results aren't pure ink across the board. Many searches seem to deliver an Ink/AV blend. There is also a clear weighting on terms that deliver category matches.

[jbgilbert]

I was looking forward to the Yahoo/Inktomi thing, but now have totally changed my mind.

Does Yahoo expect everybody to pay $300/yr to submit a domain?

Inktomi's crawler has been basically dead for over a year -- is not crawling properly and indexes slower than Christmas.

PositionTech has numerous problems..

So how the heck does Yahoo think they can successfully compete with Google search results under these conditions?

Have they learned nothing in the last few years?

[CygnusX1]

PositionTech has numerous problems..

I talked to PositionTech today and they said that all their problems are fix. Not sure if it is or not, but they said that they posted a message here and that all of the reported problems have been corrected.

The reason I called them today is to find out if the problems had been corrected, so I could submit to them a bunch of webpages.

[WebGuerrilla]

Have they learned nothing in the last few years?

Based on the results they are now displaying, I'd say they've learned a great deal. The are easily on par with Google's results.

[Alleks]

I think that is general repetition before full switch to Ink results. As I have read Yahoo wanted to roll out Ink results at the second part of Jan 2004.
Also I noticed that about week ago they did the same thing on local portals like au.yahoo.com or uk.yahoo.com, and yesterday Ink results for the short time were on main search (I mean search.yahoo.com).

[ncw164x]

>>Inktomi's crawler has been basically dead for over a year

Not from where I am sitting it's not, slurp has been going banana's for the last 7 days plus

ncw164x

[mat]

Finally get to see some non G results - cleared out all my Yahoo cookies, logged in to Y mail, then went to Y front page and did a search - non G results.

Can't agree with WebGuerrilla that they're on a par with Google, be that pre- or post-Florida, but they're not too bad, I guess. What I do not see (unfortunately) is any trace of AV - the results are a 100% match for Ink at PositionTech for my (regional travel) tests.

Keyword-in-domain seems to be damn popular, and a batch of doorway pages that I'm pretty familiar with are doing very well (idiots have made this clear from the path, however).

I agree that directory matches help, but they are not at all up to date. I had a site move in Y a while ago, and it's not showing yet, neither the old or new category. Finally, the BOW data seems a bit flaky also.

Off to test some more.

[Added a short time later]:

but they're not too bad, I guess

May I take that back? Actually, for a lot of searches, they are bad, if not worse. Still pure Ink, and still a long way from prime-time ready. Mix in some AV fairy-dust and they might be OK, but for now, corny and hackneyed SEO wins hands-down.

[Jon_King]

Thanks for that cookie tip mat. Yes Pure Ink results from here.

[Ledfish]

I've been seeing slurp crawling deep places of my site in the last week (6-7 days). Also my yahoo traffic has been climbing daily. Its almost at 50% of my google traffic and I'm ranking better.

So I'm very happy with Yahoo at the moment.