Investigation of Technology: Google and Yahoo - Essay Example

I. Introduction In the vast information highway known as the World Wide Web, searching effectively is vital. Thus, the latest generation of search engines is developing new ways to search the Internet for news articles, images, multimedia, and, of course, Web pages. These search engines are tools that help us scour the Net for the mundane things that interest us, the nearest and best restaurants to dine in, movie reviews, sports updates, and the latest forums for every topic under the sun. If you want to have quick access to thousands of magazines and journals at for your thesis or get information on almost any subject matter, these online search engines make it easier for us get the most out of the Internet. In this study, we are taking a closer look on Internet search engines, focusing mainly on the leaders of the pack, Yahoo and Google, on their interfaces, features, technology and functionality. These two engines still trump their competitors in terms of popularity and in overall performance, so it is interesting to get an insight into what makes Yahoo and Google tick. We will also explore the potential of this technology as a business application that could expand our business horizons, and enhance information exchange. II. Review Google For the Internet savvy generation, Google has become the paramount Web search engine, which was officially launched on September 21, 1999. Since its successful launch, it has established itself with its relevance-ranking basis of link analysis, cached pages, and assertive development. “In June 2000 it announced a database of over 560 million pages, which grew to over 600 million by the end of 2000 and then 1.5 billion in December 001. The 2 billion reported on their home page as of April 2002 includes indexed pages, unindexed URLs, and other file formats. By November 2002, they moved their claim up to 3 billion, and in February 2004 it went to 4 billion.” (G. Notess, 2004). Google and its technology runs on a unique combination of advanced hardware and software systems that consist of high-speed algorithms and efficient networking. The heart and soul of Google’s software is called PageRank. This software is developed by Google co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin while studying at Stanford University, and is specifically designed for ranking web pages. PageRank continues to provide the basis for all of Google’s web search tools. High-quality sites receive a higher ranking, which Google remembers each time it conducts a search. Of course, important pages mean nothing to you if they dont match your query. So, Google combines PageRank with erudite text-matching techniques to find pages that are both important and relevant to the search. Google goes far beyond the number of times a term appears on a page and examines all aspects of the page’s content (and the content of the pages linking to it) to determine if it’s a good match for your query. By default, multiple search terms are processed as an AND operation. Phrase matches are ranked higher. Google uses an automatic Boolean AND between terms.” In October 2000, they added the ability to use an OR (which must be in upper case) to do some Boolean OR operations” (G. Notess, 2004). Google added phrase searching designated in the regular manner by enclosing the phrase in “double quotes” in February 1999. But there are no other proximity searching is directly available as of today. There is also automatic plural searching that takes place sometimes and word stemming occurs for English words. This can be turned off, by using the plus sign in front of each term that should not be stemmed. However, within phrases, there is a trick, which can be used for a wildcard word by using an asterisk (*) within a phrase search to match any word in that position. With regards to Google strengths, it is now the largest search engine that supports different file types such as PDF, PS, XLS, TXT, PPT, ASP and more. Also, it uses a wide variety of databases to cope with different search category. For example, it uses picture database to handle image files, Usenet news databases to handle Google Groups, Directory. However, Google consist of a number of limitations when it comes to searching. These includes : no nesting, no truncation, does not support full boolean, link searches must be exact and are incomplete, only indexes first 101 KB of a Web page and about 120 KB of PDFs, may search for plural/singular, synonyms, and grammatical variants without telling you. Yahoo Probably the most popular website on the Internet, Yahoo is a strong on-the-page optimization search engine. Originally just a subject directory, is is now a portal, directory, and search engine in one, making it one of the important starting points of a someone who is new to the Internet. To go to the Yahoo portal and main site, use http://www.yahoo.com/. For direct access to its search engine, use search.yahoo.com and to access the directory use dir.yahoo.com. Yahoo boasts a large search engine database introduced in February 2004 which includes cached copies of pages as well as links to the Yahoo directory. It also supports full Boolean searching and nested searching with the operators AND, OR, and NOT. Either AND NOT or NOT can be used. Searching can be nested using parentheses. Operators must be in upper case. In the Advanced Search, it also has forms for "all of these words," "any of these words," and "none of these words." A Yahoo search includes a few categories from the directory followed by sponsored links or ads, and then the bulk of results come from Yahoos own search engine database, which appears to be primarily (but not entirely) based on an Inktomi database. To list well on Yahoo requires a decently high keyword density or many keyword-rich incoming links. Putting keywords at the beginning of your web page title is also important in helping you rank well in Yahoo. Compared to other search engines, links are not weighted as hevily in Yahoo. Yahoo still considers many low quality links in your search such as those that you would get from signing guestbooks. On the other hand, Yahoo lacks some advanced search features such as truncation and automatic plural searching or word stemming. Indexing is still limited to only the first 500 KB of a Web page (although it is still more than Googles 101KB). Other weaknesses that we need to point out are that link searches require the inclusion of the http:/// and that Yahoo includes some pay for inclusion sites. III. Critique Yahoo For years, Yahoo has provided the Internet community with well-maintained and stable services in the form of Yahoo Mail, Yahoo Groups and Yahoo messenger. But in recent months, some users have noticed certain problems in these services. One of the main complaints of Yahoo Mail users can be summed up in one word – spam. Even a newly created, unused account on Yahoo Mail can be spammed. These spammers range from “get rich quick” schemes to advertisements. And since the account has never been used (in fact has just been created), there seems to be a nexus between Yahoo and these spammers. To say that Yahoo sells e-mail addresses to these spammers is not certain. Yahoo probably only selles addresses to “good” spammers, not taking into account, however, that these “good” spammers may or may not sell the same addresses further to other spammers. Another service from Yahoo is the Yahoo Messenger, which is an online messaging tool that enables the user to chat with other users who are logged in the Yahoo Messenger service. Despite of its many practical features, it still has some problems that users complain about. One of these problems is that when a user disconnects from the Internet, the Yahoo servers do not time out on the user’s connection and continues to show the user online. Which cause people to mistakenly send messages to users who are actually offline. Yahoo Groups has also been experiencing some problems, according to users. For many years, Yahoo groups provided efficient and well-organised services to hundreds and thousands of mailing lists, clubs and groups. Since 2001, Yahoo’s servers sporadically can no longer resolve domains, resulting in user’s accounts being marked as bouncing because of domain problems, which result in users being marked as bouncing and no longer receive messages from the lists. And lastly, Yahoo Search, which remains as the only search engine that lets advertisers pay to have their Web pages included in its search results. Google One of the main criticisms thrown at Google lately is that it is behaving more and more like a marketing/advertising company than a search engine. Google has recently changed their Terms and Conditions to prohibit criticism of their AdSense service Terms and Conditions on participating sites. Another major critisism about Google is the privacy related problems with regards to using Gmail, Google’s mail service that offers a 2 GB of email space. What privacy advocates fears is that user’s email will be retained even after user’s delete their account and that email copies are stored on Google’s system and maintained to continue service even after account termination. IV. Business Application Google and Yahoo have been making profits for the past years, as large companies started to spend more on online advertising. But judging by their recent earnings figures, the trend is just hitting its stride. Both Google and Yahoo have put themselves in key position to capitalise on this trend, with Google executives predicting that there will be significantly more money transitioning into the pay-per-click model of advertising. But how exactly do these giant online companies generate huge amounts of cash through their websites? A key aspect for Yahoo has been the ever-increasing overlap between two kinds of online advertising -- the so-called branded ads and advertising associated with Web searches. Branded ads are image-based units that are placed on many of Yahoo’s Web pages. These ads have long been appealing to entertainment companies or makers of consumer goods, which use this marketing tool to establish their brands online as well as direct traffic to their own sites. It is a known fact that most consumers often check out products online before making a purchase offline. This is one of the reasons why big advertisers are lured to Web search-related ads as well. Yahoo has seen a significant rise in search-ad spending among automobile makers and financial services companies. On the other hand, Google relies mainly on web search marketing. But the company is also starting to venture into the territory of image-based advertising, which has been Yahoo’s strong suit for many years now. Google’s AdWords is basically a money-making machine, where small to large business enterprises can advertise depending on the number of clicks on the ad. This is popularly known as pay-per-click search. In recent years, Google has dramatically improved the effectiveness of its search ads. According to studies conducted by comScore Media Metrix, the percentage of Google users that click on a paid ad has climbed to from 15% to 20% in the past year, that jump would represent a 33% increase in sales for Google. Yahoo, by comparison, generates ad clicks on just about 12% of its searches. In order to improve on this figure, Yahoo has to find a clear-cut formula for displaying the most relevant ads on its search results. V. Conclusion For many of us, Google and Yahoo has been a vital intermediary between what we want to know and the answers that are out there somewhere on the Net. Within a few years since advent of the Internet, the rise of these two companies has been remarkable. And despite spending almost nothing on marketing, both of them have become two of the most popular and most visited Web sites on the Internet. Each of them has also found their distinctive way to make serious earnings. Their business is split evenly between advertising on the Web site, and selling its search technology to other websites. Their new mission is to capitalize on its technology by entering new markets, such as selling its search engine technology to corporations for use on their in-house networks. And it looks like they both have a strong chance to thrive in this new market, thanks to their core strengths. The most important task now is to broaden their technology lead. Google and Yahoo are both on the rise. They have gone from Internet phenomena to a real business. VI. Recommendations Broaden their technology lead in order to thrive in new markets for SME (Small and Medium Enterprise). Completely purge paid inclusion on Yahoo search results for users to access more information as possible for a particular topic or subject matter. Improve infrastructure in terms of technology to minimize fault and bugs on systems. To come up with innovative features that will enhance the user’s Internet experience. References : Internet Ad Gains, 2005. Market Scan: Yahoo!, Google Boosted [Online] Available: http://www.forbes.com/markets/2005/09/28/internet-advertising-yahoo-0928markets01.html [Accessed 4 November 2005] DM News, 2004. Yahoos criticism continues for Site Submit [Online] Available : http://www.rankforsales.com/n-aw/672-seo-jul-20-04.html [Accessed 4 November 2005] Kottke, J. 2003, The first rule of Google AdSense is, dont talk about Google AdSense [Online] Available: http://www.kottke.org/03/10/google-adsense-sucks Orlowski, A., 2004. Google mail is evil – privacy advocates [Online] Available: http://forms.theregister.co.uk/mail_author/?story_url=/2004/04/03/google_mail_is_evil_privacy/ Notess, G. , 2005 Review of Yahoo! Search [Online] Available: http://searchengineshowdown.com/features/yahoo/review.html [Accessed 5 November 2005] Google.Com, 2005 Our Search: Google Technology [Online] Available: http://www.google.com/technology/whyuse.html [Accessed 5 November 2005] Notess, G. , 2005 Review of Google [Online] Available: http://searchengineshowdown.com/features/google/review.html [Accessed 5 November 2005] Businessweek.com ,2004 Why Theyre Agog over Google An IPO may loom for the search engine everyone loves [Online] Available: http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/01_39/b3750036.htm html [Accessed 5 November 2005] Read More