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A couple months ago new rumors surfaced around Yahoo making a return to search.
With those rumors, we asked you guys if you think Yahoo should indeed make those efforts or give up now? With over 200 responses on our poll I wanted to tell you that the majority would like to see Yahoo return to search.
75% of you said yes, Yahoo should get back into search. Only 18% said no, they should not and 7% don't care either way.
I suspect the 75% said yes so that there would be more diversity and competition in the search space. Or maybe they hate Microsoft?
Here is the pie chart with more purple in it:
Disclaimer: Please see my poll disclaimer post before coming to any conclusions on these results.
Forum discussion continued at WebmasterWorld.
Note: I am offline today and this post was pre-scheduled to be automatically posted. So if I am delayed in responding to issues or comments, I apologize in advance.
Comments:
Pants
04/22/2014 12:58 pm
I wish someone like moz would come out with a search engine we could/would all support and spread the word about, they really could change everything and start a grass root movement in the industry!
Tian_Mian
04/22/2014 02:18 pm
Danny Sullivan and many others don't believe in a successful return. Others think it would either make or break Yahoo. But look at Apple. When they started to do phones, they had no idea about the technology, nor how a phone worked. A few years of research and development and they made and are still making the best phone on the market.
Durant Imboden
04/22/2014 02:35 pm
Given Bing's lack of success in eroding Google's market share, it seems unlikely that Yahoo would want to fritter away a billion dollars or two on a fool's errand. Back in the day, Yahoo used Google Search results. Maybe that would make sense again--this time with a "powered by Google" icon next to every Yahoo Search box to tell users that they can search the Web from Yahoo.com without giving up their preferred search engine.
Internet Man
04/22/2014 03:13 pm
Or better yet, why not Apple or Facebook get into it?
wertwert
04/22/2014 04:26 pm
Please come back to search Yahoo! Just make your PPC and webmaster tools platform best of breed and offer tons of perks to gain rapid adoption... half price clicks for the first year would take a HUGE bite out of google.
wertwert
04/22/2014 04:33 pm
Build your platform around fairness and transparency for all websites. Or at least attempt to.
wertwert
04/22/2014 04:38 pm
Really??? You want Google to have more market share? You must have a bunch of Google stock or something. Do your kids work there?
Thomas
04/22/2014 04:50 pm
or maybe because its easy to rank. i can build a site and be on page one in 3 hours in bing and yahoo serps... too bad the volume isnt there :/
wertwert
04/22/2014 04:58 pm
The quality is there. I'll buy every bing click I can get. My average order from bing is nearly always 30% or higher than Google's.
Durant Imboden
04/22/2014 05:02 pm
I'm not saying that I want Yahoo to use Google results, I'm merely saying that it could make sense for Yahoo. If Microsoft can't chip away at Google's market share, why should Yahoo expect to do any better, especially with its more limited resources? Sometimes it makes sense to be a "frenemy." (Case in point: Apple, which still uses Google as its default iOS search engine even though Steve Jobs famously threatened to "go thermonuclear war" on Google's Android.)
Thomas
04/22/2014 05:03 pm
yep, i get one or two leads from bing for every 10 i get from google... the quality is way better just not the volume to ditch G. buyers are on bing, lots of window shoppers on google, or leads we have to play the long game with.
wertwert
04/22/2014 05:11 pm
I think it would be a mistake for Yahoo to give control of a large part of their revenue to a competitor. If they want to be in search then it has to be a core competency. Syndicated search is brand poison the way it is for meta-search and ISP subscriber homepages...
Tian_Mian
04/22/2014 05:39 pm
Waiting and praying for it.
Durant Imboden
04/22/2014 05:55 pm
The question for Yahoo! has to be, "Are we a search engine?" If Yahoo regards itself as a portal or a content site, then syndicated search could make sense.
wertwert
04/22/2014 06:00 pm
Clearly it didn't make sense before and it isn't making sense now. I still don't see your point of it making sense yet again. The best real estate on their homepage is dedicated to search and has been since the beginning of their website. Question answered and solution clearly isn't syndicated search or it would have worked by now.
Durant Imboden
04/22/2014 08:16 pm
Again, I'm not saying they should do it, I'm merely saying that it's an option (and probably a more realistic option than trying to compete against Google and Bing with limited resources).
Zach
04/22/2014 10:13 pm
Honestly Speaking, i also like Moz, but i don't think they would make a better search engine. One of their Product OSE, still lacks way too far behind than others in the same niche..
Sabita
04/23/2014 12:59 am
I am in favor of diversity and competition. I hope Yahoo comes back strong. No one company should control this much of the market for businesses. I am a small business (and forced to be and SEO) being directly impacted by the Panda Algorithm, for having done nothing wrong. All because Google has waged a war against crazy people out there trying to spam, and ALL because they HOLD 70%+ of the market share. If the playing field were leveled to Bing, Yahoo, and Google, all having equal market share and all with different algorithms, spammers wouldn't have as big of a chance for their "reverse engineering" capabilities to spam in the first place. I just want to run my business, but an online retail business ultimately becomes a slave to Google, all because of their market share. I happily had to put in infrastructure to support the business that Google used to give me for 8 years. I couldn't help but to have to invest in my business and add people and systems because of the overwhelming orders. I did what any business would do to grow. Everyone says "Don't rely on Google", but it is such a powerful force, you can't turn it away either. Should I have said to my customers: "Sorry, I can't fill you order because Google has sent me too many today in comparison to the orders from my other marketing efforts" ?? You become a slave to them either way and it's all because of their 70% market share. Google's war against all of these crazy spammers, has hurt so many great, and real, small to mid size businesses, and they really don't care because they are in a "war" mentality to "break spirits" and they don't care who they bomb while trying to take these spammer people out. And why should they care when their revenue keeps growing, because businesses like mine, PAY them $5K+ a month to put our Ads at the top of their page for our "Relevant Key Words" that once used drive organic traffic. The irony is Adwords gives you a 10/10 quality score, but Google Search says "sorry, your website sucks for that key word". Bottom line, competition will be great for small & medium businesses, just like it is for the consumer.
Charu Rastogi
04/23/2014 05:17 am
We are living in the world of competition. Come back yahoo, we are waiting...
nagleonce
04/23/2014 05:58 am
It would probably help. Yahoo was doing OK at search before they outsourced to Bing. Yahoo had vertical search (sports, weather, celebrities, etc.) six months before Google.
n0tSEO
04/23/2014 08:49 am
The way I view things, I think Yahoo! may fare pretty well as a search engine WITH a portal, contents, etc. Yahoo! was one of the first search engines I used back in 2001 (sorry, that's the year I got my first computer ^^) and the user activity was crazy --- search returned good results, email accounts and user groups were a top choice, etc. If Yahoo!'s user base is still big enough, a new focus on web search could just work out well for them.
erewr
04/23/2014 09:48 am
sure, we need more search engines. Google is so corrupted now, low quality, and earning extra income killing small webmasters and killing all real internet.
xcfcv
04/23/2014 09:51 am
google not have the future with such huge violations of internet freedom and new "walking by webmaster corpses to make more money" policy.
sada
04/23/2014 09:56 am
i think what google is a searchable catalog now, with white-listed sites near top.
Sundeep Reddy
04/23/2014 11:26 am
Monopoly isn't good in any industry... Yahoo and Bing are our only options here :/
Ryan Fitzgerald
04/23/2014 02:49 pm
Essentially Google is the dominate option anyway. What do you think Yahoo will offer? Lower cost per click? Maybe, initially but as it was with Bing, CPC's will get closer to Googles over time. Will Yahoo offer new innovations? Maybe. But Google has historically set the trends, So what the benefit? I don't really see one. I see more saturation in an already saturated online world. If Google is in fact the 900 pound gorilla it's because we helped make it that way.
Durant Imboden
04/23/2014 02:55 pm
Why not something new and different in its very conception? Bing is a Google Mini-Me, and Yahoo has been largely a private labeler of Bing search results for half a decade. Any real competition against Google is likely to come from search engines that bring something newer to the table than another repackaging of "ten blue links." Think about it: What about a search engine that makes heavy use of personalization and spits out one "recommended" result at a time instead of page after page of links? (Think "Google Search meets Angie's List.") And another search engine that delivers only informational results, for people who are looking for knowledge instead of goods and services? And a collection of vertical search engines that use at least some degree of human curation to separate the wheat from the chaff in industries like finance, health, and travel where most sites are worthless? And other innovative search tools that might earn no more than a few percentage of market share each, but which collectively might capture hundreds of millions of Web searchers? In the traditional "blue links" search-engine category, the people have already spoken: Google is the public's favorite, and Yahoo Search: The Sequel isn't going to change anything. The way to diversify the search-engine market is to let the market create more diverse search engines.
Patti Paz
04/23/2014 03:34 pm
Yea, RIGHT, but . . . . that 900 pound gorilla will have its day, just as all the biggies of the past did (think GM, IBU, Kodak, etc etc). I don't think it is possible to make the rapid and drastic changes Google has made without creating lots of anomosity, pain, and otherwise ill-will out there. Just think, THREE years ago, before all the 'progressive changes from google', there were not nearly as many dead websites along the roadside. So, Google, Rejoice while you can, as it will all fade when the people wake up and realize they get more relavent search results on Bing, and, hopefully coming soon, Yahoo.
Patti Paz
04/23/2014 03:35 pm
WELL put!
Patti Paz
04/23/2014 03:36 pm
REALLY!! Have you done that lately?? Just give us the website in which this has been done. What a hoot!!
wertwert
04/23/2014 05:47 pm
I think a clone of google that only put ads on the right side and never at the top would be highly compelling. At some point a good search without ads masquerading as organic is good for everyone... Google is unable to draw that line and maybe a competitor will take advantage of that. Tricking organic clickers with ad placement is another black hat practice google is engaged in. It doesn't matter if they label it in the corner with tiny font...
Durant Imboden
04/23/2014 07:17 pm
For a search that I did just now, Google showed three ads above the organic results, and Yahoo showed five. So it doesn't appear that Yahoo is eager to "only put ads on the right side and never at the top." Also, Yahoo wouldn't need to "get back into search" with an in-house search engine (the topic of this thread) if it wanted to change how it displays ads.
Sundeep Reddy
04/24/2014 04:36 am
But too much personalization will frighten people, though specialized search engines concept sounds cool. If they can achieve the perfection that Google is missing right now and yeah with less number of ads above the fold.
Murat Dikici
04/24/2014 07:04 am
It would be good if Yahoo returned to the search. Google shouldn't be alone on top. There must be some competitors, otherwise we all will have trouble. I would like yaho to accept ad publishers outside of US. I live in Turkey and can't publish yahoo ads on my website. Allowing only US publishers will make Yahoo a US website. It must go Global. This way I am sure it will have a good position as an ad network. Cheers,- Murat