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March 20, 2007

Comparing Google and Yahoo in Mobile Search

On Yahoo Mobile homepage, Yahoo launched a challenge to compare its new mobile search engine with Google's. Yahoo recommends you to download a PDF [ 13.1 MB ] that compares the search results for 16 general queries like: "New York", "George Bush", "iPod".

Unlike Google, that only shows web search results by default (and occasionally OneBox results), Yahoo shows the first results from a lot of specialized search engines for some queries. They call this "Yahoo oneSearch" (video) and it's the major feature of their new search engine.

Yahoo explains: "oneSearch results are delivered to you in a new, breakthrough format that redefines search for the mobile phone. It's all about getting instant answers with just one click—no need to sift through a bunch of links to find exactly what you're looking for. (...) oneSearch results are easy to read, scroll through, and expand when you want more information—like more images to view—with a single click. You don't have to "feel lucky" to be lucky every time with oneSearch."

I would argue that anything would be good to answer a such a general query like "New York" and Yahoo should've focused on more precise queries in their report. In fact, for most queries, Yahoo Mobile Search shows 3 web pages and 3 mobile web pages, while Google shows 10 web pages - that means Google shows more information and focuses on web pages, which are more numerous and more interesting than mobile web pages (compare the results for [Oscars 2007] in Yahoo and Google).



{ Thank you, Alexandru Dragan. }

5 comments:

  1. I really like the new design of Yahoo's oneSearch, but Google's content is better, especially Google Local. I prefer to mix and match between the two.

    Tappity.com is a site that allows users to take the best of the mobile web, and create a personalized homepage with the links/searches that are most relevant to them. So, I can have my Yahoo News and Google Local, plus other great sites that are not built by the Big Three.

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  2. BOO to Yahoo. I hate Yahoo and anything they make or are a part of (except Widgets - the widgets are cool). Google has my heart and soul as far as searching goes.

    Google's homepage is awesome. Their online word processing / spreadsheet applications are a great help. The notebook feature (which I just recently started using with Firefox) is so very handy when researching this and that.... And, finally, there are countless other features that make Google far superior to any other site. GO GOOGLE. DOWN WITH YAHOO.

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  3. A new study report,

    Mobile Local Search: Location-based Search Market -- http://mobilelocalsearch.net/id47.html


    explores opportunities and vendors in this space, and provides a general overview of the current market and technology landscape, including location technologies / LBS.

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  4. I think Yahoo have been clever the time and money spent on mobile search now just might help them claw back what they've lost over the last couple of years, esepcially over here in the uk.

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  5. This is pretty sad that we have lost the fantastic iGoogle that was optimized for iPhone and the G1, I loved and used it 5 times a day. Google Mobile SUCK especially that it changes the formatting of webpages and eliminates a lot of information from the page without giving you a choice. Its terrible. Horrible!

    ReplyDelete

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