Yahoo! to Compete with Google by Neutering Its Search Engine for Fun and Profit

The reason that Google dominates today as the search engine of choice is that, so far, Google has managed to avoid making the sort of bone-headed decisions that competitors like Yahoo! have. According to the New York Times, for example, Yahoo! has decided to go with a pay-for-listing scheme for its new search service that is supposed to compete with Google. Now this may be great for Yahoo!’s bottom line — temporarily at least — and it may be good for some sites that want to be listed, but as an end-user I just want to find what I’m searching for. But according to the New York Times (emphasis added),

Yahoo said yesterday that it would start charging companies that want to ensure that their Web sites are included in its Web index from which research results are selected.

. . .

Yahoo will update its index of paying clients every two days, while it may update its listing of other sites once a month. And Yahoo will give paying clients detailed reports on when its users click on their sites and will help those sites improve their listings.

Let me see if I’ve got this straight. Google currently appears to update a large number of its sites every few days — I know that when I post something at AnimalRights.Net, it usually appears in Google’s index about 72 hours later. Yahoo!, however, will only keep sites that current if they pay up front for the service. So, for a mind boggling large number of sites, Google is always going to have more recent information in its index than Yahoo!

Would somebody at Yahoo! explain to me again why I would want to use their intentionally neutered search engine?

Source:

Yahoo to Charge for Guaranteeing a Spot on Its Index. Saul Hansell, The New York Times, March 2, 2004.