Let’s get this straight, I am not Google bashing here. I love the Googley folks, they rock. When it comes to categorizing information so relevant results can’t be served quickly to us Google rules! Is there more to your cyberlife of business and personal interests? You bet there is and it’s not for everyone. For online marketeers you may not be willing to invest the time needed to be a recognized “top contributer” in Yahoo! Answers. You might appreciate all the tools Google gives you (I do) in the Webmaster’s toolbox but big perspective is an asset in this world. That said, I say spread your wings. Here’s what I think Yahoo! does better than Google …
Yahoo! Website Explorer
This is my favorite tool to use when you really want to study a web site. Is one of your competitors out ranking you for keywords that you want to rank for? Yes, Google does have tools such as site- maps and a suite of other website diagnostic tools. They also use the best quality control filters in the search industry. For this reason I would prefer the Yahoo! Suite of explorer tools because I’d like to see unfiltered results. Site- explorer begins with entering the site you want to learn more about.
You will immediately see important information about the site you entered. How many pages are currently in the search engine index? How many other web sites are linking to yours? These are two key questions about any web site that are great to have answered immediately. Use this information to help you learn more about your own web site or your competitors.
It’s fast -free and requires no special account.
Yahoo! Answers for Reputation Building
This is an online Q and A program for the public to freely participate in. There are no preconceived gurus until you earn the status of “top contributor”. Even then, it only means you talk a lot or know a lot (or both). This online Q & A web site began in 2005. As a free member you can ask or answer questions. Asking questions will cost you points and answering questions will award you points. On top of that, if your answer is chosen as “ the best answer” you will score big bonus points. In the Yahoo! Answer community these points are like currency and weight. What is your percentage of best answers.
Overall I score this website as a great social experience and opportunity to connect with other like minded people.
You’re probably wondering what’s in it for you? Remember that you are connecting directly with people sharing similar interests. Yahoo! Answers provide some great tools for finding the kinds of questions you would be good at answering. Find your sweet spot and help people out! If you really are an expert; share some of that knowledge to build your reputation. Only good can come out of this if you are a true contributor to questions and answers.
Yahoo Web Analytics One Up On Google Analytics
When it comes to a community, Yahoo! is a much different culture than Google. In my opinion Google is a master of information indexing and displaying while Yahoo is more on the social side. You can take advantage of that in their web analytics package offerings by the demographic data of their users. This includes users from Yahoo! mail, Flickr, and Yahoo! Looking at your analytics interface is a sweet treat when you get to see the demographics on your visitors. This is not available (yet) in Google Analytics.
Ask Yourself “Yslow” to Solve Website Problems
This is a great tool made by the fine folks at Yahoo! One of the big questions and answers you may have is inferred in its name. This tool takes into account the data sets that represent high performing websites. When compared against yours you can learn what your strengths and weaknesses are along with what kind of corrective action you might take. To run this program you will need to have Firefox installed as your browser. You’ll also need to install a plugin known as fire bug (a great web analytics tool). Then you install YSlow you will have your website graded.
Summary
There you have one man’s opinion on what Yahoo! does better than Google. These days it’s really tough to find anything on line that Google does not have some control over. Both, Yahoo! and Google are ranked in the top five according to Alexa.com.
They used to share the number one and two position until social networks such as Facebook and Twitter became popular. Now if we use the same website to analyze the position of the social networks we can see that Facebook has jumped into the second position.
It is rumored that there are more searchers performed on Facebook in some days than on Google. It is just a question of time before Facebook will have the number one position in the world wide web.
For now I wanna keep this post meaningful on the subject of what Yahoo! does better than Google. For us (the online population), we can take comfort in knowing we are the driving force behind the statistics. We are the propellant, we are the Internet.
