Google Users Want Yahoo Even More Than Sex?
from the is-it-that-hard-to-find-yahoo? dept
Recently Google launched their fun Google trends tool, that lets you compare just how popular different search terms are over time. For a few days people posted fun comparison graphs online, and then plenty of people forgot about it. However, someone over at Network World kept playing and noticed something odd. An awful lot of people seem to be searching Google for “Yahoo.” In fact, Yahoo is such a popular search term on Google that it even beats sex (not always, but the two are pretty close, with Yahoo taking the lead recently). There are a few things that could contribute to this. The trends tool doesn’t take into account the full search, but if the word was used, it’s included. So anyone who mentions “yahoo” in a search is counted, even if it’s for something like “Yahoo Finance.” Either way, though, the results do seem a bit strange, so we’ll join Network World’s Paul McNamara in asking if someone can explain why so many people are searching on Google for Yahoo?
Comments on “Google Users Want Yahoo Even More Than Sex?”
Jumping Out There
I think yahoo is known for it’s services and is advertised everywhere on the web for things like their e-mail service. Yahoo does a very good job of getting their name out, so people want to know more, so they search the popular by word of mouth search engine for a provider for different services, which happens to be yahoo, not knowing the search engine company they are using offers the same or similar services they are looking for, and then some. I personally love google and everything they are doing, but i have to be proactive about finding out about it, whereas yahoo is more widespread throughout advertisements on the web. Alos some people may like the older yahoo style of organization, using folders and stuff in their e-mail, and are just not warmed up to the new ajax style or rather the style of navigation and organization of things. I like to call those people old school, but hey, there lots of old schoolers out there. Google rocks, that’s all i have to say, but wait, people gotta know what google has to know it rocks!!
Can't find www.yahoo.com?
Eternal September?
Yahoo...
…ooooh, you mean that choco-drink. More than sex? To each his own.
Location, Location, Location...
Google users expect to find Yahoo on the Internet more than they expect to find sex there. At least I hope that’s the case?
Ya-who?
Its simple: a lot of yahoo users don’t know what an address bar is.
Msn and aol users have similar issues.
Re: Ya-who?
Yep, a huge percentage of internet users do not know how to use an address bar.
So say someone has yahoo email that they want to get to, and google is their default search engine.
they will just search for yahoo rather than use the address bar or a bookmark.
Even my boss searches for urls instead of typing them in. Of course I get called into his office any time the site he is looking for doesnt come up in a search and I have to once again try to explain the different between an address bar and a search box.
Hi, 411
Isn’t that a bit like asking the phone operator for the number to 911?
I know what Anonymous Coward is saying though. I know far to many people that type the website they’re looking for into the search engine, instead of straight into the address bar. Seems the simple like web browser is still too complicated for some people.
Re: Hi, 411
Actually you’re right but it may be even more banal than that. I’ve actually seen this happen a few times.
– People boot up their web browser.
– Homepage set to Google by default, cursor loads in page search field.
– They type in a URL without looking where they’re typing, and are surprised to discover they’ve typed in a whole URL (Yahoo or otherwise) in the keyword field of Google instead of the address bar of their browser.
Not quite idiocy, but the result of hunt & peck typing…
Re: Hi, 411
It’s not uncommon for me, and I recommend to people to use the search engines rather than type in the url, especially at work.
The reason is the number of spoofed web sites and ‘inappropriate’ web sites that have addresses that are common misspellings/mistypings of popular web sites. Using a search engine (Google) nearly eliminates the possibility of running into spoof sites, or getting into trouble at work by hitting an ‘inappropriate’ site.
Evolution of internet usage
I for one think it is often easier to type a word into google and click a link than to type out the full address, even if I already know what it is.
It is interesting to consider if this is indicative of the ever increasing divide between the end usage of the internet and the technological underpinnings. Just as text based domains were layered over numerical ip addresses to improve usability, these trends may represent search engines eclipsing static addressing as the predominant means of navigating the internet.
Re: Evolution of internet usage
That is why I just type in “yahoo” in the address bar when I want to go to Yahoo. Firefox does the rest.
It merely performs an “I’m feeling lucky” search against google for whatever you type in. I lean on this crutch quite a bit.
What I find MORE weird is the amount of people googling for ‘google’ do they not realise they are ALREADY THERE.
Re: googling for google
Possibly they’re just looking for google-related items, but I see your point.
Re: Re: googling for google
I admit it. I’ve gooogled “Google Local for Mobile” on more than one occasion. Never for Yahoo, however.
Re: Google for Google
Lets not forget the number of idiots out there that don’t know the difference between the address bar and the google input form. I have seen all to many people type an address into the google page to go to a URL.
There are plenty of reasons that “google” could be found in a real search. How-to docs, mail searches (within gmail, such as looking for invites you have sent, etc), news about google, and many other searches would contain “google.”
In this, I think that you are the exception rather than the rule. Being something of an old-timer, myself, I know what you mean, but using the search bar in that fashon is not so new. I have had people ask me how to get to hotmail (this was in ’97 or ’98) because it was the second search result, not the first.
In fact, so many isps are now shoving yahoo down their customer’s throats that the un-informed consist of a large portion of yahoo’s new customers. For example, grandma orders verizon dsl. The first thing that they do is put in the cd and start hitting next. Within 10 minutes, they have a yahoo puss account, and the yahoo browser is their new default http handler.
That is the exception, not the rule. Millions of people now flock to these companies because they need “the internet.” Not that they know what “the internet” is, but they have to get “online.” Now many of them “get online with yahoo.”
Then when they get so overloaded with spyware that a friend or local computer store (or possably the geek squad, at over $100 per hour) has to bail them out. Naturally, they get a home page that doesn’t take 5 minutes to load over a 3 mbps connection. Naturally, google.
Or better yet, they get firefox. Either way, they have hopefully learned by this time how to type, and faithfully type in “yahoo.”
It is also worth noting that for anyone who uses google as their default search engine, any misspellings of http://www.yahoo.com that don’t hit a squatter will bring up search results with “did you mean … ” right at the top.
Either way, as broadband gets cheaper, the iq of the average internet user goes down in preportion.
(end of rant)
They are searching for a person,'Modus Yahoo', aka
This has nothing to do with Yahoo.com
People are searching for a new musician whos name they have heard pronounced “Modus Yahoo”, but it is correctly spelled Matisyahu.
He is a hasidic reggae act who is catching on.
Re: They are searching for a person,'Modus Yahoo',
Hey thanks… I’ve been wondering how the heck you pronounce his name!
Re: They are searching for a person,'Modus Yahoo',
You are an idiot. That is not an explanation, it is the assinine assumption of a 6 year old. BTW its pronounced “Mah-tis”, not Modus.
What did that accomplish? You grammar trolls are all over the net, CONSTANTLY WHINING. It never gets any better. How long do you spend reading your sentences?
Learn to speed read, and think alot faster. Petty mistakes will bother you alot less, and you will start to realize it is WHAT people are saying, not how they are spelling it, that is so stupid.
Finally, typing yahoo (or almost any other URL) into a search bar then clicking on the top link, is 1 step too many. Type yahoo into your address bar, you don’t have to waste ALL the energy to type “.com”, just hit enter. Ouila! Yahoo. Unless, your browser sucks and you recieve search results (which, I think, almost never happens anymore).
why should sex be on the top
BTW, why is this an issue?
Re: why should sex be on the top
“BTW, why is this an issue?”
Because it’s like going in to Burger King and asking for directions to McDonald’s. If this is correct, it means even people using Google would rather be using Yahoo.
Re: why should sex be on the top
There was a time when Yahoo was the search engine of the day. Now it’s google. When I don’t know the answer to a question I often hear people say “Google it.” Since Google came on the market the use of Yahoo as a search engine has declined and new users might never have heard of it. There is however Yahoo Messenger and Yahoo Mail. These are still very popular products. Maybe what’s happening is that people who are some what new to the internet are using Google to find Yahoo Messenger and Yahoo mail because they don’t realize that Yahoo is a search engine.
reason for googling for yahoo
If you type yahoo into google to go to http://www.yahoo.com from there it doesnt show in the address dropdown as it would if you typed it directly onto the address window.
Not a big issue at home but if you are going to yahoo mail from your work PC regularly you probably dont want yahoo to come up as your last entered address.
Googling for Yahoo
Where have you all been , haven’t you ever heard of making Yahoo in the back seat of your car , come on now.
Re: Googling for Yahoo
thats whoopy not yahoo
As people here have pointed out, I believe that this is due to people typing Yahoo into a google search rather than the address bar.
I personally do this all the time, because it’s often quicker for me to ask google via the firefox search box than to type http://www.yahoo.com into the url bar, even if I do have to move the mouse.
I do this with a lot of urls, and it’s almost a habbit of mine now. Often you can’t remember if it’s a .com .org .net .co.uk, some sites will require a www. subdomain others wont. Hence applying the heuristic ask google and click the first link is IMHO quite efficient given current browser interfaces.
Re: because it's often quicker for me ...
Just a tip…
If you just type in ‘yahoo’ (or any other domain name) into the address bar, and then press ‘Ctrl’ and ‘Enter’, it will put the ‘http://www.’ in front and the ‘.com’ after.
Meaning of Yahoo.
Maybe this can be linked to ever spiralling crime levels?
If I’m not mistaken a Yahoo is someone disreputable- a scamp, tricky, mischievious and circumvents the laws.
Maybe people are just trying to look for yahoo’s they can hire to sabotage their neighbours flower gardens- pulling up the Shasta Daisy’s and planting Ox-eye daisy’s instead.
Just a thought.
Why not just use bookmarks? One click and you’re there.
Netscape Navigator even has a “Personal toolbar” where bookmarks are on a toolbar just under the address bar. Again, one click and you’re there. This idea is great for those Grandmas…if only they could figure out how to add a bookmark……
Here is the search term they are using
How to remove/block yahoo toolbar from installing.
Google is the Way
Google is a transport mechanism for many people. I have my browser configured so anything typed into my address bar that isn’t a real URL is automatically submitted to Google as a search. So if I type “yahoo” or “mail.yahoo.comp” on accident, google gets a search request for yahoo. Google figures out where I most likely want to go and helps me there.
“Because it’s like going in to Burger King and asking for directions to McDonald’s. If this is correct, it means even people using Google would rather be using Yahoo.”
I think this is a false analogy. Google is the ad facto default of the internet…to many users, it’s more the platform than the browsers are. Google simply hears just about everything people ask about, and it turns out a lot of people are just trying to get to the services offered by yahoo (probably chat and mail mostly). Don’t lose sight of the fact that they’re using google as the tool to get there…
Perhaps a better analogy is this is like a library noticing which books are popular. Yahoo is just a destination on the web; google is the way there.
THer better finance
Unfortunately google finance sucks… I am a great google fan but it does not even come remotely close to Yahoo Finance.
I think Google should learn from yahoo how to attract the stock trading audiance. iIf you want to compare here are both the sites
http://finance.yahoo.com/
http://finance.google.com/finance
The better finance
Unfortunately google finance sucks… I am a great google fan but it does not even come remotely close to Yahoo Finance.
I think Google should learn from yahoo how to attract the stock trading audiance. iIf you want to compare here are both the sites
http://finance.yahoo.com/
http://finance.google.com/finance
Why Yahoo is searched the most often...
There is no debate why this is the most popular search term. It is because Yahoo!, while in many ways inferior to Google, still has the number one spot in web traffic.
——————————-
As of April 27, 2006, the top English language web sites in terms of traffic ranking as listed by Alexa [3] were:
Yahoo
Google
MSN
eBay
MySpace
Passport.net
Amazon
Microsoft Corporation
Google in the United Kingdom
Blogger
BBC Online
*This fact was pulled from Wikipedia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_traffic
My bad, let me repost that...
There is no debate why Yahoo is the most popular search term. It is because Yahoo!, while in many ways inferior to Google, still has the number one spot in web traffic, according to Alexa.
Now, granted, Alexa only collects information from IE browsers that users have to MANUALLY install and therefore may be biased against non IE Google users, so, cite this at your own risk.
—————————————
As of April 27, 2006, the top English language web sites in terms of traffic ranking as listed by Alexa were:
Yahoo
Google
MSN
eBay
MySpace
Passport.net
Amazon
Microsoft Corporation
Google in the United Kingdom
Blogger
BBC Online
source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_traffic
Re: My bad, let me repost that...
doing a survey of just IE users and claiming it accurately represents the internet is like doing a survey of just aol users and claiming the same thing.
It’s possible that they deliberately choose Google as the means to find their Yahoo content (as the example mentioned, Yahoo Finance). But I think more likely, Google is the default or only search engine built into their browser, or their default start page, and they can’t be bothered to set the browser to use Yahoo. (Or, if using Safari or Camino, they only get Google as an option.) They’re not so much making an effort to use Google over Yahoo, but not making an effort to do any differently. After all, why on earth would anyone waste energy to use Yahoo over Google? What could be gained. Google is the iPod of search engines: it has entered the public consciousness as standing head-and-shoulders above the rest, and for good reason.
Though I assume this person meant de facto, I can attest to the fact that (besides being the standard) it is (to some users) more the platform than their browsers are. I’ve seen a user open their browser (which went to Google automatically) and then enter a known URL into the Google search field, and then click the link to that URL in the results. They could have just typed the URL into the browser’s address field, but they first went to Google for some reason. They were apparently so used to doing EVERYTHING through Google that they didn’t even think to go directly to the web site, or maybe even didn’t know that they could, or didn’t know how.
I have Googled Yahoo
Well I assume I have Googled Yahoo. I’ve have MSNed Yahoo and Google before. The IE address bar is sub par, occasionally when I type in yahoo.com it searches msn for it. I eventually changed the defualt search to Google (I use google, the wife has Yahoo email) this still occured thus I have accounted for a few of the Googles of yahoo
I have googled Google
When i first started using Google Maps, before it was Maps.Google.com. I would google “google maps” to get the url, which was an ubscure page in google. I have also googled “Goggle Earth” before, as with Google Search Bar
My dad is terrible about using Google instead of the address bar to go to websites. He is a terrible speller so if he has any doubt (which is ALWAYS) he just uses google as a spell checker and clicks on the link it provides.
I do it all the time.
Two words: google suggest. It’s often quicker for me to type the first characters of a url into google and select the top match then to use the address bar (assuming I’ve never been to the site). I do this all the time for blogs that I read via RSS… lifehacker and techcrunch get quite a few google hits from this silly tactic.
Yahoo is DIFFERENT than Google
Couldnt this trend be due to the fact that people use Yahoo for its content Google to find that content?
Lets face it, Google’s whole M.O. is to be an awesome search engine that doesn’t force its own content down your throat.
Yahoo’s M.O. is to be an OK search engine and provide access to all their content off their homepage.
I mean, exposure wise, more people are going to find Yahoo Groups, Yahoo Maps, Yahoo mail, Yahoo personals, Yahoo finance, Yahoo HotJobs, etc etc etc because its in their line of site the minute they get to Yahoo to search for something.
At Google.com, well, you’re only going to find those features if you look for them. More clicks to get to content= more time wasted=less interest.
Google is a great company with great services that are far superior to their competitors. However, I’m sticking with Yahoo because their services work well enough and I can find them quicker.
Personally, I
use the Google toolbar’s search mechanism, minimized to the taskbar, to quickly type in a URL I want to go to. I would be a number of other people do as well. It eliminates the need for the browser to launch so you can click a favorite.
reverse the order...
You would think that by changing the order of the search (yahoo, sex) around (sex, yahoo), the results would be the same; but, guess what: they’re not.
“sex, yahoo” returns MANY, MANY more results for sex than yahoo.
Google Trends does not accurately report search query data.
This explains it clearly..,
from dictionary.com:
yahoo
n 1: not very intelligent or interested in culture [syn: yokel, rube, hick, hayseed, bumpkin, chawbacon] 2: one of a race of brutes resembling men but subject to the Houyhnhnms in a novel by Jonathan Swift [syn: Yahoo]
It’s a lot easier to put a google search in then scroll through yahoo. Not only that but sometimes it’s easier to find. I’m a computer tech and when i go for office updates, or msn downloads etc…. for a customer it’s easier to type in a search on gfoogle then go through microsofts site or even through msn search. (Yeah I know thats MSN and not Yahoo, but it’s an example)
US Doesn't Search for Yahoo
Look at the stats below the Google Trends for “Yahoo” alone. You will see that the US is not even in the top 10 regions for this search. This should offer some insight. I don’t know what, but something.
spelnig
I know civilization is almost defunct and no one cares except me but you people cannot spell. Furthermore, you (as a group) make the most sophomoric mistakes in English usage. Here are some examples; this is not a complete list, just what I can stand before I get too depressed:
then != than
site != sight
audiance != audience
daisy’s != daisies
Oh, what’s the use.
Yahoo/Sex
Oh c’mon! The search results for ‘sex’ include sexual abuse and same-sex marriage. Hardly titilating searches.
I’d like to see results for a specific yahoo offering like ‘yahoo mail’ or ‘yahoo finance’ compared to a ‘sex’ search term like ‘girls gone wild’ for a more accurate picture.
Please someone jump on this, because I’m at work and dying to know the results.
~That One Guy
It's the interface
I just looked at the http://www.yahoo.com root page for the first time in ages. If I were a non-computer person looking for, say, Yahoo! Finance and I was confronted with THAT, I would definitely run back to Google and use it to find the Yahoo! service I was looking for.
A resurgence in the popularity of Australian comic Yahoo Serious?
Why is everyong jumping on the fact that people are googling yahoo here? Thats not the point of the article. people are googling yahoo MORE than they are googleing sex.
Personally I would guess that sex isn’t really that popular a search term. People searching for porn would use PORN not sex. The word sex is more… academic.. people would probably use sex as a search term when they are looking for information about sex. Which I doubt happens very often..
Just a way to get places
One of the top queries on Google on 9/11 was CNN.
shortcut keys for the
To expand on the address bar shortcut fill in shown before.
type-> yahoo then press Ctrl + Enter key
and you will autofill your address bar with
http://www.yaho.com
use Shift+Enter and you will get a .net address
use Ctril+Shift+Enter and you can get .org address
This will also test if you have a real web browser. If it doesnt work use control panels add/remove wizard to help you.
shortcut keys for the
To expand on the address bar shortcut fill in shown before.
type-> yahoo then press Ctrl + Enter key
and you will autofill your address bar with
http://www.yaho.com
use Shift+Enter and you will get a .net address
use Ctril+Shift+Enter and you can get .org address
This will also test if you have a real web browser. If it doesnt work use control panels add/remove wizard to help you.
YAHOO IS BETTER
address bar hijacked
What’s happening is yahoo or something else seems to hijack address bar urls. I type in a certain url and it automatically leads to a yahoo search results with a link to the web site, instead of to the web site direct. I use IE. It is enormously irritating to say the least.
yahoo and Google going the way of the dinosaur !!!
Relax…Everybody…Google and Yahoo are soon to be defunct anyway…
SMARTASS.COM is coming !!!!!