Yahoo back to Google?

it's 1.38 am EST and many searched are identical to google

[walkman]

their search site was down for about 5 min. try a few searches, they're almost identical. Can anyoen confirm this?

[jerryc]

They probably switched back to an old 'google ranked' database or were tweaking the algo.

[walkman]

google ranked or google db? My site wasn't in yahoo, now it is. Some 2000+ pages, Granted Google has more, but I see many similar results, including the same cache on many sites.

[eyeinthesky]

I now have 1,330 pages in Y compared to zero when the switch started. This is still less than in Google.

But the funny thing is my sites don't show up on the serps (as of now)

Algo tweaking or Slurp indexing -- sounds like good news to those currently not in Y?

[walkman]

they're limiting the results to 999 listings too now. Who else does that :)?

I think something bad happened and they asked G to come back till they figure it put.

[steveb]

Yink! results showing.

Google backlinks showing.

<scratching head>

[helenp]

steveb, you are right,
if searching to links my site, find severals, as well my own site.
But if searching for my site, I am not in..............

[walkman]

"But if searching for my site, I am not in"

try the full url, http and everything. I'm in big time, but not in the serps (unless I search for somethind that's ONLY found in my site, like my name or when I use ""). The listings seems identical to Google though.

Meanwhile my .net is still in the SERPS with a few pages, way too old though. Maybe they thought I tried to trick them with dupe sites?

[mayor]

Some strange reporting behavior going on here.

On Saturday, searching Yahoo for pages indexed using site:mysite.com appeared to give me a listing of pages indexed by Google. But site traffic logs for Saturday did not suggest Yahoo switching back to Google. Traffic levels remained consistant with the new Yahoo.

[zf007]

Some strange reporting behavior going on here.
On Saturday, searching Yahoo for pages indexed using site:mysite.com appeared to give me a listing of pages indexed by Google. But site traffic logs for Saturday did not suggest Yahoo switching back to Google. Traffic levels remained consistant with the new Yahoo.

I saw this too, 2/3 my previous google pages are back to yahoo by searching site.com, but not www.site.com
Seems like my pages are saved in a backup database and a normal search will not show my pages, except searching some special keywords only exsited in my pages or the complete title of my pages. The log suggested no increased traffic from yahoo too.

[steveb]

Interesting. Search for a long bit of unique text on Yahoo from a page that doesn't show as being in their index (but is in Google) and Yahoo will show the result if it is one of only a couple results available. When I search for something with 23 results, the page is not shown... like

"word1 word2 word3 word4 word5" shows as the only result but for
"word1 word2 word3 word4" the page won't show as one of 23 results.

So, the Google indexed pages are "in there" somewhere in Yahoo Search but they don't show up except under very unique circumstances.

[edited by: steveb at 11:08 am (utc) on Feb. 22, 2004]

[angiolo]

I think that they are triggering the Algo.

Sometimes it seems Google, sometimes Ink.

Comparing the Yahoo-Ink results, today I see less spam (less pages of the same domain, compared to the past days).

[george123]

Nothing has change ,yahoo uses its own SE ,the only thing that is identical between the Yahoo algo and the Google algo is the domain "keyword" .

[mayor]

Steveb, I tried your test with a pretty unique five word search included in quotation marks. My site came up as one of 20. I repeated with a shortened four word search. It still came up as one of twenty. Repeated with a further shortened three word search. Now it came up within the first ten of 100 results.

So I can't confirm what you saw. However, the search result I was getting looked like a Google search result.

Maybe Yahoo is retaining the Google index as backfill in order to "freshen" their SERPS.

Hopefully some others folks can try these or similar tests so we can get a better handle on what's going on.

[erwig]

I have been trying Yahoo! search for the past 5 days now and I see no difference from the Google results. When I do a site:mydomain search, the exact same pages that are included in Google are returned. I have only my homepage in Ink, but most of my pages in Google.

I also tried quite a few searches in my industry, and the results were identical in Y and G, except that G sometimes indents results from the same domain.

I have yet to see ANY evidence that Y switched. Am I living in a parallel SE universe or something?

Christian

[elklabone]

I'm with you erwig...

Is it possible that Yahoo results are just showing up on certain keywords, and not others.

[erwig]

Just checked again, and it seems like Y uses G results when Ink produces zero results. I just realized that Ink had even dropped my homepage, so searching for my site produced no results so it got backup from G.

Christian

[tceperry]

I have been following my keywords since the change over. The results are SIGNIFICANTLY different between Y and G. Y results have much less spam, and many more of my competitors than G. G returns a lot of garbage sites. Of course, I could be biased, since we are in the top 10 for my key keywords NOW on Y and who knows where we went on G!

[fctoma]

I still see a nice presence in both Y and G.... nothing really has changed for us.

I do see that they are 90% the same results between Y and G.... but nothing major to report. I can say they are not exactly the same.

I did some research on the Inktomi "pure search" page and noticed real similar results between the new Y results and Inktomi's "pure search".

[elklabone]

Ah... they are different, how that I look more closely.

I guess the good news is that Ink results are similar to Google's...

So can we assume that Inktomi is using a similar ranking methodology? Backlinks important in the new Ink?

[communitynews]

it seems like Y uses G results when Ink produces zero results

I think erwig is right.

If I search "site:mysite.com" on yahoo, I only get a 5 listings. If I search "CommonWord site:mysite.com", where CommonWord is frequently in the TITLEs on mysite.com (but NOT in any of the 5 returned by "site:mysite.com"), almost 10,000 are returned.

Another piece of evidence to support this, is that in the few files I checked, the "cached" version on yahoo contains a string that indicates it was the first request to our system. Google cache is the same. I believe that googlebot was the first to request this file, based on analysis of our logs.

[Hollywood]

I was always on page one for "XYZ",.... after the switch I am on page three on Yahoo. This has stuck, if this was a google result on a yahoo search then I would be on the first page for a yahoo search, I am not....

Thus.... umprrrp...... I'll just go get another Gin and Tonic!

Hehehe

Hollywood

[Leosghost]

It is using Google cache for my site since yesterday ..I know this because it "google"can't actually "cache" me ..just says it can ..and shows my pages in its frame ..yahoo is doing the same thing ...weird thing is the positions aren't the same ..Yahoo shows me at #1 in a search of nearly 5000..# 2 is a "tricks" hidden text ..inside zero sized frame sets site ...Google shows me # 31 and the same "trick" site at # 1 and # 2....
BTW ..INK says it does know of me for the same search terms and gives me first page .......
My head hurts and I gonna go lie down ....

[papamaku]

I'm seeing google results on [uk.search.yahoo.com...] but Yink results on [search.yahoo.com...]

Whats more strange is that on the uk site the link to my directory listing is fine (as is a competitors), whereas on the US site my directory link isn't there (but my competitor's is)