Is it just me or is Yahoo's search engine destroyed?

[mizzou]

Sometimes when I google something, and get strange hits that include spam sites and things nothing at all related to my search...I realize I accidentally searched for something through Yahoo. Then I go and actually google it, and get fantastic hits on the first page.

I used to use Yahoo back in the 90's and early 00's religiously, what happened to them!?

 

[Nashemon]

You googled something on yahoo? That's unpossible!

 

[BurnItDwn]

yahoo still has a search engine?

They were crap in the Altavista days, they are crap in the google days. I wish they would just die already.

 

[MustISO]

I find it to be complete garbage. I never use it but when Firefox switched to that as the default I accidentally searched with it and it was complete crap.

 

[lxskllr]

I removed all engines except DuckDuckGo on all computers. If I need a different engine, I use a !bang.

 

[HumblePie]

yahoo still has a search engine?

They were crap in the Altavista days, they are crap in the google days. I wish they would just die already.

Ahh the AltaVista days... Which was a major upgrade from that spider named one before it that AoL used.

 

[TwiceOver]

I thought they outsourced all of their search stuff to Bing.

 

[sdifox]

Worst part is it infected Mozilla

 

[darkswordsman17]

OP, how do you feel about Bing? Because that's who is actually doing searches for Yahoo now. But I think there's more to it than that, Yahoo has some weird thing going on for searches.

IIRC they'd switched to being a non-search company quite a while back. They just have a really robust directory of websites that you can still poll in search or dig through though I believe, but they've been directing searches through other companies for a while (I think Google used to be doing it, but then Microsoft ponied up more money, largely to bolster their ad serving to try and compete with Google, not sure what's going to happen now that they sold their online ad thing to Uber - yeah Uber as in the "not taxi" service).

Worst part is it infected Mozilla

It's not like it's integrated really. You can change it easily. I still use Google. I tried using DuckDuckGo but they weren't that good for a lot of searches. I've heard they've improved a lot (and I know you can insert a command so it'll also hit up Google).

 

[sdifox]

OP, how do you feel about Bing? Because that's who is actually doing searches for Yahoo now. But I think there's more to it than that, Yahoo has some weird thing going on for searches.

IIRC they'd switched to being a non-search company quite a while back. They just have a really robust directory of websites that you can still poll in search or dig through though I believe, but they've been directing searches through other companies for a while (I think Google used to be doing it, but then Microsoft ponied up more money, largely to bolster their ad serving to try and compete with Google, not sure what's going to happen now that they sold their online ad thing to Uber - yeah Uber as in the "not taxi" service).



It's not like it's integrated really. You can change it easily. I still use Google. I tried using DuckDuckGo but they weren't that good for a lot of searches. I've heard they've improved a lot (and I know you can insert a command so it'll also hit up Google).

It actually takes some work to get rid of it. There was even an exe that was a separate installation that hijacks browser default search etc.

 

[SearchMaster]

Yahoo has a LOT of paid search. If you search for "restaurants near los angeles" as just one example, Google's top results are some Google Business records for some restaurants followed by 9 actual restaurant-related links, a few news stories, then some more actual restaurant-related links. Yahoo has Ad/Ad/Ad, some news links, some Yahoo Business (?) links, and 10 actual restaurant-related links, then 4 more ads.

I have a search I run via automation to see where my site ranks on the various search engine for some common searches, and Yahoo has very few non-ad links per page versus Google and Bing.

 

[mizzou]

OP, how do you feel about Bing? Because that's who is actually doing searches for Yahoo now. But I think there's more to it than that, Yahoo has some weird thing going on for searches.

IIRC they'd switched to being a non-search company quite a while back. They just have a really robust directory of websites that you can still poll in search or dig through though I believe, but they've been directing searches through other companies for a while (I think Google used to be doing it, but then Microsoft ponied up more money, largely to bolster their ad serving to try and compete with Google, not sure what's going to happen now that they sold their online ad thing to Uber - yeah Uber as in the "not taxi" service).



It's not like it's integrated really. You can change it easily. I still use Google. I tried using DuckDuckGo but they weren't that good for a lot of searches. I've heard they've improved a lot (and I know you can insert a command so it'll also hit up Google).

I honestly have never used Bing. For some reason I associated it with a adware website.... :\

 

[gorcorps]

yahoo still has a search engine?

They were crap in the Altavista days, they are crap in the google days. I wish they would just die already.

It's my belief that yahoo is only still in existence because of fantasy football

nothing else makes sense

 

[Ventanni]

Yahoo search results are powered by the Bing search engine, but both Bing and Yahoo independently control the content of the page. That's why you may see 3 paid ads on Bing and 5 on Yahoo. Only the organic and paid ads portions are shared. Yahoo still has full independence on their display, maps, local stuff, and they're launching a new PPC platform that will deliver ads to compete with Bing Ads (Bing Ads = the PPC platform that allows you to advertise on both Bing and Yahoo at the same time).

I use Bing first cause I love Bing Rewards, but if I can't find something I'll use Google.

 

[Imp]

My website traffic is 99% Google, and 1% Yahoo and Bing.

 

[88keys]

I find it to be complete garbage. I never use it but when Firefox switched to that as the default I accidentally searched with it and it was complete crap.

I have no idea why Firefox switched over to Yahoo as the default search engine..... well okay yeah I kinda do but yahoo is terrible. If they're butthurt over Chrome cutting into their market share they could have at least picked something better than Yahoo.

 

[John Connor]

My website traffic is 99% Google, and 1% Yahoo and Bing.

Yeah, both of my sites get crawled by Yahoo Slurp. Google being number one and Bing second.

 

[ninaholic37]

I have no idea why Firefox switched over to Yahoo as the default search engine..... well okay yeah I kinda do but yahoo is terrible. If they're butthurt over Chrome cutting into their market share they could have at least picked something better than Yahoo.

Yahoo made a better monetary deal than Google to have their search there.

 

[mmntech]

Yahoo is more like a Reader's Digest of the internet than it is a search engine. Has been for a long time. I know someone who writes for their Shine section.

They must have paid Mozilla a boatload to make themselves the default search on Firefox. You'd think DuckDuckGo would make more sense.

 

[Murloc]

Yahoo has always been laughable for me.

Their babelfish translator used to translate screenshot to Italian literally, producing the sentence "The screen has shot" (shot in the gun sense).

I have no idea why Firefox switched over to Yahoo as the default search engine..... well okay yeah I kinda do but yahoo is terrible. If they're butthurt over Chrome cutting into their market share they could have at least picked something better than Yahoo.

lol I didn't even know, I haven't done any fresh installation recently.

 

[BurnItDwn]

Ahh the AltaVista days... Which was a major upgrade from that spider named one before it that AoL used.

I remember lycos and webcrawler and archie from before Altavista, but, I will admit that before 1995 is somewhat vague as I was only about 15 years old at the time...

 

[cavemanmoron]

yahoo still has a search engine?

They were crap in the Altavista days, they are crap in the google days. I wish they would just die already.

Google search user here. No clue about Yahoo search.

 

[Eug]

Yahoo was a competitor for search a decade ago, but now it's completely useless. I say this as a long time Yahoo email user.

It makes sense that Bing powers Yahoo, because I find Bing useless too.

Google is the only viable option.

Ironically, Bing search knows this:

 

[Spacehead]

It's not like it's integrated really. You can change it easily. I still use Google. I tried using DuckDuckGo but they weren't that good for a lot of searches. I've heard they've improved a lot (and I know you can insert a command so it'll also hit up Google).

It actually takes some work to get rid of it. There was even an exe that was a separate installation that hijacks browser default search etc.

I don't recall it being difficult to move Yahoo out of default mode.


As to the OP, i don't remember the last time i used Yahoo to search

 

[darkswordsman17]

It actually takes some work to get rid of it. There was even an exe that was a separate installation that hijacks browser default search etc.

Not for me. They changed their options layout recently, but click Options then Search and you can very easily switch the default Search engine.

Maybe that's if you do a fresh install of Firefox? I haven't done that in a long time.

I don't recall it being difficult to move Yahoo out of default mode.


As to the OP, i don't remember the last time i used Yahoo to search

I don't either. I'm almost certain it was a simple option. Might've even been able to do it from the search bar although that could've been on mobile (since I don't have the search bar on my Firefox layout).

I have no idea why Firefox switched over to Yahoo as the default search engine..... well okay yeah I kinda do but yahoo is terrible. If they're butthurt over Chrome cutting into their market share they could have at least picked something better than Yahoo.

As others pointed out, Yahoo was willing to give more money to Firefox than Google, and unfortunately Firefox has to pay the bills.