Yahoo Says It will Switch to Inktomi First Quarter

[yankee]

Bad time for an IPO. From Yahoo's earning's release yesterday:
[zdnet.com.com...]

"Yahoo on Wednesday said it will drop search partner Google during the first quarter of 2004 in favor of its own technology, opening a new phase in the battle for Web search dominance."

[steverose]

I don't know ins and outs like you guys, but webalizer on both my sites shows ink has been around lots more than it used to. Best. Cheers, S

[Mardi_Gras]

>I don't know ins and outs like you guys,

We're all just speculating - your guesses are as welcome as anyone's :)

[pontifex]

Gonna have to get those pages optimized for Yahoo/Ink soon, or a third of my traffic will vanish.

In Germany, Google gives you around 70% of your traffic, Yahoo around 7%.... that is not 1/3! Is it in the US? Or are you just listed very good at Y!?

[edited by: 2_much at 4:34 am (utc) on Jan. 16, 2004]
[edit reason] url not appropriate in this thread [/edit]

[davewray]

Mardis_Gras...You're absolutely correct about bias in people's opinions in here. Naturally if you sit pretty in the G SERP's you're not going to want to see Y! going to Ink results...and vice versa if you're doing well in Ink.

It's almost like the folks here who are not doing well in Ink insist that the Ink results are bad. I've researched dozens of keyword phrases and I gotta say, I don't see much difference in relevency between G results and Ink results.

And for people to assume they know what Yahoo is doing/thinking is just bunk. You do NOT know what Y! is doing/thinking.

And the average joe or jane will NOT see a difference in the quality/relevance if Y! goes to Ink because they are not anal webmasters like us ;)

Dave.

[worker]

Joe surfer may not notice, but the media is going to notice.

[Chris_D]

Yahoo, Inktomi, Overture, FAST/All the web all rolled up into one neat package?

That'd be Ink-all-over-yahooters....

: )

[sean]

>> And the average joe or jane will NOT see a difference

How do you explain the rapid rise and fall of so many search engines?

Millions of Joe Surfers have been voting for and against these engines.

[EquityMind]

Agree with Mardi Gras. Short term no effect. Long term only time will tell.

I'm doing well in both Ink and Google.

Percentage of traffic on one of our sites that did 2MM pageviews for month of December using ONLY organic and no PPC (although some paid inclusion in INK):

Google - 49.3%
Yahoo - 25.7%
MSN - 14%
AOL - 3.6%
CNET Search.com - 1.3%
Netscape - 0.8%
Ask Jeeves - 0.3%
Alta Vista - 0.2%
Lycos - 0.1%

New terms heard coined: Yahinktomi, Overhoo, Inkhooture (my fav).

Inktomi and Overture came by my office today and we all had a laugh over these new terms. A lot of new things happening in the paid inclusion space. All I can say is that if you're considering a move into this space (PI) do it now.

EquityMind

[mktman]

I do am not too well informed as far as SE history goes, but with Yahoo owning ATW, AV, Ov, Ink, and YDir they have a lot of R&D assets at their disposal both in technology, but also in people and their unique approaches to the problem. If I were them I'd be working like a dog to tie in the best of all these assets into something that can offer very good results.

Mktman

[steveb]

"It may not be in your best interest to see Yahoo switch to Ink, but it most certainly is in mine."

Why do you guys bother posting this stuff? Who cares what is in your interest?

If you can't separate out objective quality from your own interest, then your don't waste electrons with pointless biased posts. Sheesh.

I care about quality results. My own rankings will take care of themselves if a search engine values quality. You guys who think quality equals your sites ranking high crack me up.

=====

"the average joe or jane will NOT see a difference in the quality/relevance if Y! goes to Ink "

Talk about denial. Do you really and truly not know that the public has rejected Ink results, for quite a long time now? Do you really not know that the public chose Google in years and months past because the results were better? Anyone who thinks the public won't and can't tell an instant difference between Google and Ink had better start seeking a clue, and fast.

Anyone who thinks Yahoo didn't roll out Ink for the past year because they couldn't find the freaking button or something better go lie down awhile.

[sem4u]

If Yahoo decides to roll out Ink as it is, then I can see an awful lot of their users changing over to Google for searches. Of course many will remain there because they use Yahoo mail, news, or have Yahoo as their ISP, etc.

[RoySpencer]

We get close to 25% of our SE traffic from Yahoo..what I'm worried about is that Google spiders our site much deeper than Ink. We have over 60,000 pages, and latest SE hits are 59,000 from G and only 800 from Ink (which is typical). So, will I suddenly lose 25% of my SE traffic?

[Bobby_Davro]

Yes

[fom2001uk]

Joe Public will not switch anywhere overnight - nonsense.

Let's wait and see what Yanktomi looks like first.

[EquityMind]

Thats how they get you into their trusted feed program. And even when they do spider deep, there is a lot of time between those crawls. One of the things about to come out with Ink on their paid inclusion is a 24 hour refresh instead of 48-72 hours. If your sites are changing constantly, this may be a good solution for you.

EquityMind

[Mardi_Gras]

>Why do you guys bother posting this stuff? Who cares what is in your interest?

Steveb - sorry you were apparently having a bad day. Hope today is better :)

[finer9]

Agreed...if they were so concerned about Google results, they'd just use google.

Google is binary these days...you either use it for all your searching or you hardly heard of it (sucks to be them, eh?)

I doubt someone who uses Yahoo for search doesn't even know they are Google results, and probably won't notice the switch to Inktomi.

[snort]

My site ranks #1 on both Inktomi and Google, but the next nine results on Inktomi are poor. Mostly pages on edu domains that do little more than link to my site (which is nice for me, but not the user.)

Yahoo must realize that Inktomi results are bad or they would already be using them.

[Kirby]

>Yahoo must realize that Inktomi results are bad or they would already be using them.

They were waiting for MSN. With the increased marketshare they'll get some good press and try to leverage the perception that surfers are switching from Google as the Google bashing continues in the media until the IPO goes down.

Then the attention will turn to INK's quality and Y! wont have any place to hide.

[HayMeadows]

Easy PR for Yahoo right now with the status of Google's results. There are way too many great sites missing in Google, that are not missing in Inktomi. As optimizers focus more on Inktomi their results will start to look better and better because these are the sites that should also have more to offer!

[Jim_Hedger]

I find some of this discussion quite strange. Google has been showing terrible results for the past eight months and is only now beginning to show stronger results. Meanwhile, Inktomi has been delivering fairly solid and relevant results for a long time. I just ran several (6 unique) searches on HotBot and Yahoo and found both highly relevant though not exactly alike. I conducted the same searches on Google and received an enormous amount of SPAM and duplicate listings.

Like all computer users, search engine users employ a number of habitual rituals when doing their stuff online. This isn't because they are less informed than others, it is because that is what they are comfortable with. It will take a lot to move users from Google to Yahoo, and, as loyal Yahoo users will attest, to move users from Yahoo to Google. The bottom line is that Inktomi will be pushing upwards of 50% of all search traffic in the coming months. It doesn't matter if it is Google or Yahoo or HotBot, our business will take our techniques where the viewers are. Apparently, the SEO industry will need to employ a variety of tactics and techniques for the two major search tools (google and inktomi). The real weirdness will begin when MSN introduces its search tool either later this year or early-mid next year. (I am betting autumn 2004). Until then, we should expect a great deal of flux. We should also expect to see changes on the fly at Yahoo as they make tweaks to the data fed by Inktomi.

I think this is the most exciting thing in SEO since Google started challenging Yahoo and AltaVista three years ago. Change is good for SEO and will present a whole range of new possibilities for search engine users, and of course for search engine marketers.

[Kirby]

>As optimizers focus more on Inktomi their results will start to look better and better because these are the sites that should also have more to offer!

The flip side to this is that spamming INK (which isnt hard) comes back in vogue because now there's the traffic to justify the effort.

[a_chameleon]

Yahoo going to straight Ink would mean billions to Google, and disaster for Yahoo.

I have to beg to differ here, steve.. If one goes to the Inktomi site, and runs the same search term in each of the respective Inktomi powered portals the SERP's are widely varied. The Ink's algo. is fairly good, and IMHO always was although previously fairly easy to rank well in with good optimizing (from the SERP's I'm seeing, looks like it still is).

Y! has years of experience and tons of talent for tweaking the Ink alorithim - and besides the Ink engine is ODP based,
as is/was Google's Directory which establishes the 'baseline' for Google.

Per the Inktomi site:

Inktomi leverages the Open Directory Project (ODP) to further improve the user experience on distribution partner sites. ODP title, description and category meta data is used to enhance Inktomi's relevant search results.

Further, although many of us recognize hyperbole when we see it.. Another blurb from the Ink site -

Inktomi continually conducts relevance tests with other competitive search engines to determine the best results available for particular queries on the Web

.

Hmmm, we'll see. But with Y! behind this, I'm certain Google will no longer rule the search engine world and perhaps this will help Google wake up and re-smell it's cofee..

:)

[lgn1]

At least for my industry, Ink is serving very relevent results, and google has been serving garbage, since florida.

I don't know why everybody is crapping on Ink, espcially, after most of us got burned after the Florida update.

[quotations]

I hadn't looked at the pure Ink results in a while. All the missing Florida sites for technology related topics are in there. Perhaps Yahoo will become the search engine of choice for technology related searches.

I will do my part to help make it happen if they keep the excellent results I am seeing on inktomi right now.

[worker]

LOL

[Powdork]

Here are some other points
1. Yahoo!'s Google results have gotten further away from Google since Florida. This seems to be a result of Y's additional filtering of results and Google's broadmatch creating more indented results.
2. People don't flock from their preferred SE over night. Florida proves this IMO.
3. People don't use Yahoo for search only. My browser opens to Y! but I use my Google toolbar or AV for searching.
4. My Google and Y! traffic is almost identical except for stickyness. Yahoo visitors see more pages.
5. I prefer Yahoverfast.;)

[finer9]

Here is a silly question - how can I directly check Inktomi results? Can we just use the MSN 'regular' results to reliably see Inktomi rankings?

[sem4u]

finer 9, just go here for the Inktomi Pure Search:

[search.positiontech.com...]

[Powdork]

search for 'pure search' and choose the first result, or
infospace.com-web search-advanced search used to have the option, but I see that is now gone. Looks like a good meta engine though.