Forum Moderators: open
From the standpoint of liability vs asset, maintaining the directory as an asset of quality is a nightmare. Dmoz isnt perfect in that regard and they have 50k+ editors. It costs yahoo money to maintain their directory, handle submissions, delete crap, find non-commercial content, etc. I doubt that the profit margin on directory submissions is very high, and its going to decline drastically now that the directory doesn't feed into search.
And coming back to the portal aspect, the directory actually competes with yahoo's other services in many aspects. Yahoo has a nice travel section of their own - why should they be sending people to other travel sites (1 example).
What does yahoo lose by dropping the directory altogether? Uniqueness? I wouldnt say so. Sure, everything you find @ yahoo can be found elsewhere, but not in the same place with the same large community. People still use yahoo mail, games, messenger, etc en masse. Those people wont up and leave or even stop coming if the directory were not there.
Yahoo will reduce costs, gain advertising space on their front screen, stop advertising competition, and not offend a significant portion of their users by basically letting the directory fall to waste. Let it rot, or just drop it altogether. Maybe even sell it to google. This is where I see the directory going. I dont think arguments that 'yahoo wouldnt do this or that because of the directory' hold up any more.
I lost a bit of traffic but not that much. Because my important keywords will show the Directory Category Matches first. Before the sponsor matches. And that's what's important. People click on those first directory links, trust me, I have the logs everyday to prove it..
I don't understand why people say that the directory is not important anymore..
However on second thoughts, they really havent had to do too much to imporve their search part of the portal. They own 10% of Google anyway, and they basically just outsourced much of their search functionality with that move.
In short, Y! enhanced their search functionality with very little effort - OR expense. Leaving their real smart guys to focus on portalization. Ov and sponsored listings, plus their 10% of Google, plus flexibility for adding partners, will make up revenue far in excess of what they lose in Y! express revenue. Basically a portal needs a "competent" search - its still an important part of a general portal tho it does distract portallers from clicking on your own portal parner links, but it need not be the USP of the portal.. and that is what Y! wants to move away from.. Google has by far cornered the "Search Portal" brand for now and the foresseable future (which in web terms can be relatvely short though!)
I doubt whether Y! express fees make up a significant part of their revenue, especially when you take off expenses, and the decline in useful non-commercial sites in the directory as a proportion was seriously harming their quality.
Up until know they could rely on hits from new or casual internet users who didnt know that better search options existed, but the proportion of those can only decrease as internet use reaches a ceiling. The proportion of "new users" is decreasing fast and the inetrnet population as a whole is becoming more sophisticated and demanding of quality. While directory included sites got the hit now, the alternative would have been a slow and steady decline of referrals from Y! anyway.
To whit, we have sites for fairly internet savvy types, some of which had no Y! listing. Since the change, these sites now are up the top of Y! listings, but traffic from Y! has been minimal. We are assuming that the sort of people that want to go these sites, already know them from other places like Google, or dont use Y!
So that's a long way around of saying I agree ggrot! I think Y! has not changed strategy, but just further building a long term strategy away from search portal to mainstream portal. They are assuming on ad revenue upkick in the short to medium term future, an assumption not too off the ball.
I also see Y! gradually but substantially introducing fees... insidiously... maybe through stock and investment tracking, games, and initially small fees for enhancements to email, messenger, and maybe even news.. They have spent a lot of times developing these areas. They want a mass of Yahhoites.. all accessing premium and free services for flexible and escalating fees with the one password. These services would also be tightly integrated with each other. So if you already have email its much easier to sign up for stock quotes with Y! than another service becuase you use the same login (in fact you are probbaly already logged in) than go with another service. For example they could deliver real time stock quotes to finance types, via the web, mobile device, messenger and email alert. Its an east click from your email to your calendar, virtual storage space, discussion groups and so on.
BAscially they are going after AOL and MSN with the big strategic thingo being that they will become an ISP as well.. They needed that to level the playing field
The synergy between Y! and G should be obvious.
Search? Bah! Leave that to Google. There are many easier ways to make money on the Web, expecially when Google is so good at the one thing they do well.. Search..
And according to the stockmarket, investors seem to like it...
Yes Yahoo has been focusing on other Media Aspects of there Business. They have not been known as a Search Engine or Directory for a long time. If you read any press releases about Yahoo, in the company Bio, it states not all that much about there Directory or Search Engine.
My feeling is that to succeed as a portal, Yahoo *needs* a good search facility. However, Yahoo may see the search facility as a loss leader. Use the search to draw them in, and make money off the portal. It does look like Yahoo! doesn't really see the directory now as a priority.
Remember these huge general directories were started back when search engines were not very good at finding things. During that time they served a very important purpose. But their time has passed: the web is too big, the major engines are too good and the costs of huge human edited directories are too high.
Smaller topical and regional directories make more sense because there are sites that will never rank well in spidering engines. (This is the great failure of the spidering engines.)
The writing is on the wall for the Yahoo directory. I will be surprised if Yahoo is still maintaining it in two years. Does yahoo care? No. It is a business decision. They know the directory is just about through and are willing to let it die off slowly on the sidelines.
