Why is Yahoo Directory one of the best known sites online

Yahoo!, one of the best known sites on the Internet, has made some major changes in the past couple of years. It seems to be aggressively moving to become Google's top competitor in the search engine world. Until 2002, Yahoo! was the largest directory on the Internet, but it switched to a crawler-based search engine, replacing its human-compiled directory listings, For a time, Yahoo! used Google's database for search results, but in April, 2003, Yahoo! dropped Google as its crawler, and rolled out its own search tool.

The New Yahoo!

In February, 2004, Yahoo! rolled out its brand new search engine - with its own index and ranking mechanism - which it calls "Yahoo Slurp." That was a surprise, since Yahoo! has purchased Inktomi, AlltheWeb, and AltaVista and now owns their databases. Instead of using one of those technologies, Yahoo! said it was building up a "critical mass" of search engine talent and investing in infrastructure and product quality. In April, 2004, Yahoo! came out with the Yahoo! search database. In the process, Yahoo! removed several unique features from AltaVista and AlltheWeb - they are still up and running but the results bring you a subset of the new Yahoo! search database. Change can also be expected within the Yahoo!-owned Overture, the web leader in paid search advertisements and the big revenue generator for the Yahoo! company.

This new Yahoo! was to be rolled out over a series of months, and according to company officials there would be several steps, focusing on web search, personalization, and vertical searching. Its search tool also offers an image search and also a very useful news search and a cache copy to help you find old versions of pages. The same new image search should start appearing on AltaVista and AlltheWeb. At the moment, there is no clear indication of how large the overall Yahoo! database is, but the AlltheWeb database was comparable to Google's in size. One clear distinction, which will help serious researchers, is that Yahoo! is capturing the full-text of web pages up to a 500k limit. This is greater than the 101k maximum offered by Google. Yahoo! also offers a broad range of file types, including PDF and other formats.

Yahoo! officials told Search Engine Watch editors that the next thing to watch for is considerably more personalization and customization. The My Yahoo! portal already offers all kinds of customized options. Watch for more options, including the capability to add Rich Site Summery feeds - or RSS - to your My Yahoo! page. RSS is a newly emerging online format for syndicating news and the content of news-like sites, from major news sites to weblogs. Yahoo! plans on localizing its features to your community, travel, personals, jobs, and shopping. While changes are still expected, below are some of the key features of Yahoo! and Yahoo!-based properties AlltheWeb, AltaVista, Inktomi, and Overture.

Yahoo! directory features

Yahoo!'s directory/portal - still the base of its database - is well organized into categories and has an excellent group of searching tools to enable a serious researcher easy access to good answers. You can personalize the directory to your needs including setting up country-specific versions of the directory, and your personalized page will also offer access to Yahoo! Groups, email, and specific channels on key topics. There is a search box at the top of the homepage that allows you to search the Web. That search retrieves its results from the new Yahoo! database.

Then the search bar gives you a choice of searching the Web or you can select just to search the directory categories. Searching only the directory is an extremely useful tool because it shows you exactly where the search finds results based on category. The directory provides access to the editorially selected collection of sites. If you do not find exactly what you need, you can look at the categories and re-route your search accordingly. You can also use the search bar to drill down into categories from within the first search you have run.

Yahoo! also offers more than twenty country-specific versions of the directory pages with localized content as well as city-focused sites including local phone directories and maps. Yahoo! recently revised its maps capability, showing off its new "Smart View" technology, which helps you pinpoint the location of restaurants, banks, and other businesses and services on local maps of U.S. and Canadian cities. Type an address into the search bar and it will retrieve a map, driving directions, local landmarks and a host of additional services. This mapping technology also incorporates hiking trails, libraries, and schools. Wireless access is likely to follow. Another outstanding Yahoo! feature is its very popular Yahooligans site built for kids ages 7-12, which contains age- and content-appropriate sites.

Two other Yahoo! properties - Inktomi and Overture - are worth a mention here. Inktomi is one of the largest search databases on the Internet. For years it has been sold as the database behind many websites, and it is still used by a few of the major search engines. It is not a well-known brand name but it is a well-established one and it is unclear what Yahoo! intends to do with it as a separate entity. Another Yahoo!-owned company is Overture, one of the leading pay-for-placement advertising companies. Already, Yahoo! has taken strong advantage of its Overture connection to gain revenue. Expect to see much more paid advertising on Yahoo!- branded sites. This revenue keeps Yahoo!'s other free operations funded.

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