Live data from Hacker News

Yahoo tops Google in US traffic

news.cnet.com

21–30 of 163 posts

Re: Yahoo tops Google in US traffic

#21
post #19

I've been experimenting with DuckDuckGo and I must say, I'm finding what I'm looking for pretty quickly (minus junk results) in the first few results. Their WolframAlpha results are actually pretty good too. I hope they can move into image searching that isn't dependent on Google or Bing though. I'm still curious as to what criteria they used to differentiate Yahoo traffic under "Yahoo! Sites" though. Did they also i…

DDGs bang notation is amazing. Now when I use other people's browsers It feels clunky.

Re: Yahoo tops Google in US traffic

#23
post #19

I've been experimenting with DuckDuckGo and I must say, I'm finding what I'm looking for pretty quickly (minus junk results) in the first few results. Their WolframAlpha results are actually pretty good too. I hope they can move into image searching that isn't dependent on Google or Bing though. I'm still curious as to what criteria they used to differentiate Yahoo traffic under "Yahoo! Sites" though. Did they also i…

I used DDG for a while and really wanted it to work for me, but for any non-obvious search, it simply falls on its face. It's easy to take for granted how good Google is at determining equivalent keywords based on context, or at grokking context in general.

I only adopted DDG over privacy concerns, and StartPage is filling this need wonderfully. Hopefully it stays up.

Re: Yahoo tops Google in US traffic

#24

I don't doubt that Yahoo has a shit load of traffic still, but unless Alexa/Quantcast/ComScore/Compete/Nielsen or any of these other so-called 'web traffic measurement services' have direct access to Yahoo and Google's traffic data (they don't), I'd take these all with a grain of salt. These services have never been accurate. http://moz.com/blog/testing-accuracy-visitor-data-alexa-comp...

Common attitude to Comscore numbers in the Web industry is yes, their data is off, but they're under-/over-counting everyone more or less equally, so relative positions and growth numbers are generally correct.

With that said, mobile used to be Comscore's Achilles heel, not sure if they're started buying click data from mobile ISPs to rectify that. Gmail is leading US email client, and Gmail Mobile combined with Google Maps might make Google the largest mobile property.

Re: Yahoo tops Google in US traffic

#26
post #19

I've been experimenting with DuckDuckGo and I must say, I'm finding what I'm looking for pretty quickly (minus junk results) in the first few results. Their WolframAlpha results are actually pretty good too. I hope they can move into image searching that isn't dependent on Google or Bing though. I'm still curious as to what criteria they used to differentiate Yahoo traffic under "Yahoo! Sites" though. Did they also i…

I used DDG for a while and really wanted it to work for me, but for any non-obvious search, it simply falls on its face. It's easy to take for granted how good Google is at determining equivalent keywords based on context, or at grokking context in general. I only adopted DDG over privacy concerns, and StartPage is filling this need wonderfully. Hopefully it stays up.

Ah yes, if I'm searching for something non-obvious, it does get a bit tedious. It's not like Google where I still find it after the 3 or 4th page; the results just get further and further from what I expect.

DDG's biggest problem so far is "grokking context" as you put it.

Re: Yahoo tops Google in US traffic

#28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The incentive is ad dollars. Ad companies want third party verification.

Google runs all their own advertising. They have no need for third party verification.

That explains why debaserab2 was able to find b.scorecardresearch for Yahoo, but not Google.

Re: Yahoo tops Google in US traffic

#29

I don't doubt that Yahoo has a shit load of traffic still, but unless Alexa/Quantcast/ComScore/Compete/Nielsen or any of these other so-called 'web traffic measurement services' have direct access to Yahoo and Google's traffic data (they don't), I'd take these all with a grain of salt. These services have never been accurate. http://moz.com/blog/testing-accuracy-visitor-data-alexa-comp...

And Quantcast* disagrees pretty strongly: https://www.quantcast.com/google.com vs https://www.quantcast.com/yahoo.com. This is only traffic to yahoo.com and google.com, though, leaving out youtube, flickr, and various other domains, but it's likely that's what comscore is measuring on the google side. Given that Youtube's reach is nearly as high as Google.com's, that's probably not helping Yahoo.

* Disclaimer, I work there

Re: Yahoo tops Google in US traffic

#30
post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I used DDG for a while and really wanted it to work for me, but for any non-obvious search, it simply falls on its face. It's easy to take for granted how good Google is at determining equivalent keywords based on context, or at grokking context in general. I only adopted DDG over privacy concerns, and StartPage is filling this need wonderfully. Hopefully it stays up.

Ah yes, if I'm searching for something non-obvious, it does get a bit tedious. It's not like Google where I still find it after the 3 or 4th page; the results just get further and further from what I expect. DDG's biggest problem so far is "grokking context" as you put it.

The contrast was/is starker: DDG would return pages of irrelevant crap, and Google/StartPage would have exactly what I wanted in the first 1-3 results, with usually 8 of the top ten being relevant. Google is simply leagues ahead of the competition right now in both index quality and query recognition.
Post reply on HN