It’s here. Yahoo has now formally announced the death of their adventure in natural search.
Many years ago when I embarked on my internet marketing career, yahoo – when they were indeed a hierarchical directory (YAHOO stands for: Yet Another Hierarchical Officious Oracle, it used to be a directory, like DMOZ or BOTW), were a major source of traffic. They then went on through a series of acquisitions to become a major player in search.
Unfortunately, the years havent been kind to the old dear. Their serps became stuffed with spam, and their algorithm which started out life on altavista.digital.com just couldnt compete with the new kid in class, a certain google.com.
Gradually, their market share declined, and it was a vicious circle – they could no longer afford to innovate, attract the talent to develop, and ultimately then have finally given up on the search market. They of course will spin it in a different light, but the facts are – its dead. Yahoo search is now powered by BING.
I for one, will certainly miss the old dear, and its relatively simple search functions.
By the way, the yahoo site explorer functionality will live for at least another 18 months, my hunch is that Yahoo will eventually start selling their data to SEO’s, competing with the likes of SEOmoz, Majestic and so on.
