Five years ago, internet marketing via the world wide web meant primarily finding ways to make the underlying HTML of a website best match the expectations of the leading search engine, which at that time was AltaVista.

How things have changed; selling via the web has crashed and risen again since then. As well as that, AltaVista has been eclipsed by newer technology, exemplified (for now) by Google.

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-Sourced from Search Engine Watch

As many of you are aware, Yahoo finally broke with Google to begin using its own crawler-based results this month. The move was long expected. The surprise was that Yahoo didn’t just use the Inktomi search engine that it owns but instead said it’s making use of completely new technology. Indeed, the company is almost vehement in declaring that what you get at Yahoo is “Yahoo Search,” not Inktomi. Ah, branding. Inktomi’s last release of its search engine was back in December 2002 — just weeks before it was purchased by Yahoo. So Inktomi was well due for an overhaul by now. That overhaul/complete rebuild no doubt benefited from all the technology Yahoo acquired in gaining AltaVista and AllTheWeb as part of the Overture purchase. Calling what emerged to be “Yahoo Search” makes sense, at least in helping Yahoo focus attention on the strongest consumer brand name it has — Yahoo itself.

Chris Sherman and I are looking forward to kicking the tires of the new Yahoo and seeing how it measures up against Google and Ask Jeeves, its two chief technological competitors, as Yahoo stabilizes over the coming month. We like what we’ve seen so far. Inktomi was always a viable alternative to Google, for those who wanted choice. Yahoo Search seems as good as Inktomi was, if not better (and see further below, for our SearchDay article on the change). Is Yahoo better than Google? That’s the question everyone wants to know. I started in on a big piece to revisit the issue of measuring relevancy and to incorporate a number of other thoughts I’ve had about where we are heading in this new chapter of search. However, I’ve decided to hold off until after the Search Engine Strategies conference in New York next week. There’s always a lot of new announcements timed with this, so it make sense to wait a bit longer.

I’d still encourage you to read my past piece on measuring relevancy from December 2002, In Search Of The Relevancy Figure, http://nl.internet.com/ct.html?rtr=on&s=1,qyo,1,hq1p,4far,akg7,h9yh It should help you consider how to evaluate some of the claims you’ll be hearing from the search engines themselves and the sporadic anecdotal testing that has already begun with the popular press. Don’t forget — the best test is the test you do. Try different search engines!

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