Rants about Java and other internet technologies by Sam Pullara

Switching from Google to Yahoo

was published on November 18th, 2004 and is listed in Uncategorized

If you haven’t tried Yahoo search yet, I would give it a go. It has some new features, gets better hits, and has a fresher index.

It has been several years since I switched search engines. A long time ago, in the before time, I used altavista.com because it had boolean logic searches and the ‘near’ modifier for pinpoint searches. Unfortunately, its index lagged and it slowed, and when Google started to make headway, I switched to it and it found more results and they were better. When I heard a couple of weeks ago that Google’s image index was 6 months behind I decided that it was time to switch again. I remapped my search key to Yahoo and I have never been happier. It searches fast, it gets great results, and it has some cool features that make me smile. For instance, try this search:

Yahoo: 428 University Palo Alto
Google: 428 University Palo Alto

Notice that Yahoo is way more efficient. They both were able to determine they were addresses, but Yahoo actually embeds the map in the search results. It also has links for driving directions to and from this location and local links for nearby attractions. Additionally, because Yahoo knows its me and I am not an anonymous searcher, I don’t even have to type in the from address because it has my list of known addresses.

There are still some differences between results, but I think it lands in Yahoo’s favor most of the time, even though it appears that Google has more results than Yahoo (but not nearly as many as Microsoft’s search site). Here is a comparison of raw numbers of hits:

Yahoo: pullara (8000)
Google: pullara (12000)
MSN: pullara (18000)

And if you ask me, the Yahoo results are the best, since I am first