More Traffic From Yahoo = Public Dislike of Jagger Results?

[LinkMaster]

I just checked my stats for the week before Jagger 10-9-05 through 10-15-5 and compared them with my stats from 10-16-05 through 10-22-05 (post Jagger). You're not going to believe this. I lost traffic from Google (as most of us did) - but I made it up on Yahoo! My search traffic from Yahoo doubled during the week after Jagger even though my rankings on Yahoo never changed. The unique IP address visits for my main website (not the one in my sig) showed 3,361 unique IPs for the week pre-Jagger and 3,241 unique IPs for the week post-Jagger. As far as MSN traffic goes, mine stayed about the same for both weeks.

This says a lot. It says that web surfers are not finding what they are looking for on Google in the post-Jagger results, so they are switching to Yahoo to see what comes up there. I find myself doing this more and more often lately too. If I don't like what comes up on Google, Yahoo is my next stop.

Once people start switching their default home page to Yahoo, look out. Could Jagger be the dagger in Google's back?

???

[dburdon]

I like Yahoo. Not only do I usually get faster and better rankings (no sandbox) its much easier to explain its workings to clients.

Google rose on the back of internet savvy people giving it free word of mouth promotion. Those who did the free unpaid promotion, of course, included SEOs. Now, maybe, we should shift our allegiance to Yahoo?

[StevenRB]

It would be interesting if, as LinkMaster suggests, rank-and-file Web searchers have somehow noticed a difference between Google and Yahoo results and have begun some kind of "migration."

But do you really think these kinds of things - as dramatic as they may appear to us - are noticed by the great unwashed?

They can't identify as suddenly "missing" results they didn't know were there in the first place. So (again, as LinkMaster suggests) some kind of general disenchantment with Google results would be needed to start a migration away.

But are Google's results suddenly "worse" just because some of our sites have dropped in rank? For many Web searchers, that same turn of events may be delivering what they see as great results :-)

I disagree with posters who have claimed in related discussions that optimization is just a mug's game. But Google has a financial imperative to remain the (arguably) best-quality search engine by getting SE spammers and plain-old crappy sites out of the top rankings.

Rather than battle Google, the obvious approach would seem to be to *not* build crappy sites and focus optimization efforts on *not* looking like the kind of site Google thinks searchers *don't* want to find :-)

[aaron2005]

Good point, I think webmasters are just hoping google gets kicked in the ass for this but the general public will not notice a thing.

Google increased my PPC in Adsense so even though I am getting less traffic from them I am making the same amount of pennies each day for my small niche. It's very interesting.

[LinkMaster]

Originally Posted by StevenRB

But do you really think these kinds of things - as dramatic as they may appear to us - are noticed by the great unwashed?

Yes, based on my stats I do believe it is possible. However, it may be another influence that is driving more and more people to use Yahoo for searching on the web.

Think about it for a moment. How do you think Google got so popular to begin with? Do you think it just happened? Did they run a multi-million dollar CNN campaign? No. It happened by word-of-mouth. Who was the first crowd to use Google? It was people like you and I. It was the webmasters... the Linux crowd... the technogeeks. We told everyone we knew about Google, and since we come across to people as authorities on the web - they just believed us and started using Google. After all, who would know better about how to searc on the web than the webmaster?

I remember back in 2000 when AltaVista pulled a stunt like the Jagger update. They were one of the top search engines before Google nosed them out of the lead. When AltaVista started deranking sites in order to curb spam, they lost the whole ballgame. They smacked the gift horse in the mouth that had made them #1 to begin with. When some businesses get big they forget who got them there to begin with.

Let's not forget how search engines get popular. Webmasters like search engines that rank them well, so they tell everyone they know to use their favorite SE. The buzz gets around the office that the webmaster says AltaVista is the best search engine, and next thing you know the whole office building is using it. When AV became the webmaster's enemy by deranking all of their sites, the buzz got around because the webmasters were mad at AV, and next thing you knew, nobody was using AV. And guess which engine us webmasters told everyone to use instead of AV? You got it - Google.

Deja Vu. I was in a guitar store last week telling the guys there about what Google did the week before and how it messed-up the search results. They jumped onboard and said they were starting to use MSN and Yahoo more anyway. A few conversations like that can change the way people search overnight. A bad reputation travels faster than a good one. I'm not making any threats, I'm just saying smell the coffee and look what happened to AV. No one is too big to take a fall.

The beauty of the web is that no big corporate giant owns it. All it takes is a large enough group of webmasters to influence people to use a different search engine, and the game changes. It doesn't matter how many hundreds of billions of dollars a company has (although that does help). Look at the dot.com crash of that late 90s. Many of the big companies that took a fall had billions of dollars - but it didn't help them when the tide shifted on the web. If anyone owns the web - it's the Joe Webmaster crowd. The little guy. Big money does not own the web. It never has.

Now many webmasters are upset with Google's Jagger update, and they are speaking out about it. And guess which SE they are telling people to use instead of the Gizzle? You got it. The big Yahizzle. That's what my stats are telling me in black and white. Now I'm getting back to me bizzleness.

;-)

[whipnet]

When the term to "google" something replaced "to search the internet" by the youth, Google was to be on top for a long time.

No one ever said "I am going to AltaVista, or Lycos that"

*

[LinkMaster]

Originally Posted by whipnet

When the term to "google" something replaced "to search the internet" by the youth, Google was to be on top for a long time.

No one ever said "I am going to AltaVista, or Lycos that"

*

IBM thought the same thing when everyone started calling software IBM-compatible.

:<

[StevenRB]

Originally Posted by LinkMaster

I remember back in 2000 when AltaVista pulled a stunt like the Jagger update. They were one of the top search engines before Google nosed them out of the ...

I agree with your point about "no big corporate giant" owning the Web. But I'm not sure that it was "webmasters" who were behind the success of Alta Vista or Google, etc., etc.

I used to work for Lycos when *that* search engine was Number 1 in the mid-1990s. They faded, not because they were battling spam, but because they decided that optimum-search technology was not what they were about (even though they practically invented it).

Alta Vista went the same way ... thinking they could be a "portal" or aggregator of "community" content, leaving the actual search technology to die on the vine.

Lycos hired the marketing guy from Penzoil to lead their team into the new Millennium. They sponsored a Nascar driver, but do you think they gave a rat's ass about the technology? It was all about "partnerships."

Google came along and cleaned their clocks ... not because their boosters were geeks, but because *they* were geeks who actually understood the Net.

[cz]

Lycos hired the marketing guy from Penzoil to lead their team into the new Millennium. They sponsored a Nascar driver, but do you think they gave a rat's ass about the technology?

I dumped a ton of money into Lycos PFI when I watched that NASCAR zooming around in circles. They may have had a subliminal message under the paint job! Just kiddin....that is too much - too much! Bold strides for the company eh?

I love Google and hate them. I spend 3-6 mos getting the top spots for my niche and all of my terms. Then I rake in a pile of sales for several months until I forget how much they HATE ME and mow my site under a pile of "closed ebay auctions" etc.. and then the cycle repeats itself - 3 years running!!

I wish my MSN & Yahoo traffic "bought". They're in my stats but compared to Google visitors, they're just tire-kickers. That's my experience with two niches I work in.

[LinkMaster]

We could all just start paying-per-click on Yahoo/Overture instead of AdSense until Jagger gets recalled. The whole idea of Jagger was to get an ad revenue increase for AdSense to begin with. From what I hear, it worked.

People are so worried about whitehat and blackhat that they lose the big picture. Google is all about money now. That's what they want from you. They could care less what color hat you are wearing.

[LinkMaster]

I just had to post one more. I'm a WebPro Veteran now. Yahoo!

[roam_dx]

StevenRB


They can't identify as suddenly "missing" results they didn't know were there in the first place. So (again, as LinkMaster suggests) some kind of general disenchantment with Google results would be needed to start a migration away.

It is a well known fact that internet buyers purchase a few days after they search for something. I don't think very many of them use bookmarks either. They search. 3 or 4 times over the week looking for the same thing.

Imagine if 500,000 people were going to buy something online on 22nd Sept, and every day since. On Google you have to start from scratch everytime, the adwords are a more dependable option ---- paradigm shift, works for G ;).

But if they don't get what they need in the adwords, and obviously did not find it in the results, where do these thousands of searchers go...Yahoo and MSN, and it only takes a few days to start getting used to before a new search tool becomes your constant friend and companion.

Also, think about the thousands of non webmaster website owners. When they speak to their consultants from now on, what're they gonna hear --- forget Google, they're totally unreliable, their search engines broken, focus on Yahoo and MSN.

Within a few months what SE do you think this website owner is using for his everyday searches ---- Yahoo or MSN, whichever his consultant tells him is sending him great traffic, and then his office and then his family...you know how it goes...it doesn't take long.

[jaldridge]

My stats are also up for Yahoo, but even more from MSN since jagger. Maybe people are starting to get disatissfied with the Google results?

[ctabuk]

You just keep telling yourselves that people are switching away from Google and you will start to believe it. When I made the post 'are Google forcing us to advertise' certain people said I was mad. I have not seen any PM's apologising.

In fact why don't we be totally honest with ourselves. Newspaper advertising revenues are down, TV revenues the same. Before too long the first 3 or 4 pages on SE results will be adverts, but I hope I'm wrong.

[dburdon]

In many respects I've always had a preference for Yahoo. Sadly, to listen to the SEO community, up until this last week you would have thought there was only one search engine - Google.

Jusdt look at the various forums on WebProwWorld and elsewhere. The Google discussions are 20 times more active than those for Yahoo or MSN.

I don't believe the general internet using public were ever as transfixed by Google as the SEO community imagined. The brand leader - and that is clearly Google - always has an advantage. But until the last week you would have thought none of the great unwashed used MSN or Yahoo.

Let's try to recreate some balance.

[dburdon]

PS,

I run number of Pay Per Click campaigns across both Google Adwords and Overture. These are for both B2B and B2C. Virtually for identical terms. I can check quite easily and compare search volumes.

[aaron2005]

Originally Posted by LinkMasta Homeslice

I just had to post one more. I'm a WebPro Veteran now. Yahoo!

Congrats Linkmaster!!! -> but I don't know if this is a good thing? I have spent more time in here than ever in the last couple days and have been less productive in what I do...oh well. ;)

[Feydakin]

I've been watching my stats as well and have seen a jump in the percentage of people coming from MSN/ Yahoo/ and AOL of all places.. But, those three combined are still just half of what is coming in from Google.. I'm even seeing a jump in links from Dogpile of all places.. Ideally it would be good for everyone if there was a three way or four way tie.. Then we could point to genuine competition in the search engine market and see them actually care about the SE tech..

But like others, I have been pushing people to use the other SEs more often..

[Faglork]

Originally Posted by StevenRB

Rather than battle Google, the obvious approach would seem to be to *not* build crappy sites and focus optimization efforts on *not* looking like the kind of site Google thinks searchers *don't* want to find :-)

You don't get it. What we see are 100%-white-hat, compatible, accessible, built-according-to-google-webmaster-guidelines sites with great content taking a nosedive in the SERPs, while the type of sites you are lamenting about gets top positions. THAT is why so many are complaining.

faglork

[dburdon]

Faglork,

spot on.

[LinkMaster]

Originally Posted by aaron2005

Congrats Linkmaster!!! -> but I don't know if this is a good thing? I have spent more time in here than ever in the last couple days and have been less productive in what I do...oh well. ;)

I limit myself to 30 minutes a day for online forum participation. Otherwise, I'd be here all day!

:-<

[LinkMaster]

If we don't start telling people to use Yahoo and MSN, we will fo