Yahoo! search is crap

Apparently, anyway.

I’ve already raised my concerns in public at SEW because this site - www.platinax.co.uk - doesn’t apparently exist on Yahoo! search, even after six months.

As I wrote there:

Last month, slurp came in and grabbed about 2 MB of bandwidth, compared to Google’s 2 GB. The site does not appear in Yahoo! for it’s own unique name.

The site is clean, so any kind of penalty wouldn’t make sense.

However, when I first set it up by merging a few other domains, I accidentally used a few 302’s for a few days, before redirecting with 301.

So my chief suspicion is that the site fell foul of Yahoo!’s old 302 problem before they apparently fixed it.

My problem now is trying to get Yahoo! to recognise the site. There are plenty of links to it, but if it was snared by a 302 issue, then how do I work with Yahoo! to clear it?

A particular problem is that I can’t even get an acknowledgement of email received from Yahoo!, let alone acknowledge that something is not quite right - hence I am powerless to try and help get this fixed.

Yahoo! has apparently tried to reach out to webmasters a lot over the past few months, but it appears that Yahoo! search remains a serious achilles heel in the portal.

The more recent Yahoo! update apparently continues that perception, with some complaining at SEW of continued serious flaws in the Yahoo! algorithm.

Someone should tell Yahoo! that there’s this other company…I forget what it’s called - Googol or something, I think…which built a billion-dollar corporate empire out of trying to produce the most relevant search results for users.

Now, someone may point out that Google’s profit’s are almost entirely AdWords driven - but if I recall correctly (and I may not) then around two-thirds of this billion-dollar income is still derived from Google’s own network.

Odd that? People used Google to find the most relevant result - and even if it was, they would still click on the ads?

But people trusted the Google brand to give them choice.

Yahoo! has certainly bought into a lot of search tech, but it’s still difficult to see Yahoo! as giving search the focus it needs to be a product that can and will compete with Google’s reputed superior relevancy.

Google is very focussed on search. How focussed is Yahoo! on search?

When you read threads like in the above links, it’s hard not to conclude that there is still a real lack of enthusiasm for Yahoo! search - but from both sides of the consumer divide.

EDIT: IT has since come to my attention that apparently Platinax was removed from Yahoo! search for an alleged DMCA violation. However, I have yet to see any evidence of such a report.

Now that’s not simply crap - that’s appalling.