This Just In: Updates from Yahoo!, MSN
|
Written By Reprise Media | August 25, 2006 | Share This
|
|
Search news in twos: both Big Engine #2 (Yahoo!) and Big Engine #3 (MSN) made updates to their search indexes this week. Let’s take’em in order:
Those prescient forum devotees could tell something was up with Yahoo! even before the engine came out and announced the new ‘weather report’ on their search blog. The forum folks weren’t exactly thrilled with what was going down. Linking to Barry Schwartz’s post on the subject, Yahoo!’s Priyank writes, “We’ve heard webmasters like you love the communication, such as weather reports from us. We are trying to connect with you more directly and enrich our interaction even further through Site Explorer.” He goes on to invite Webmasters to use Yahoo!’s site explorer to ‘authenticate’ their sites, then “join the conversation on the Site Explorer forum.” It might be just us, but the conversations already going on in the Webmaster World and Digital Point threads seem more vibrant and vital than Yahoo!’s.
Yahoo! accompanied their behind-the-scenes search index update with a more visible alteration to their search results page. Certain searches for “photos” and “photography” now yield top-of-page image results from Flickr, Yahoo!’s Web 2.0 photo sharing site. Check these results for “interesting photos,” then check the Y! Search Blog post for more info.
Search turbulence all over the map While Yahoo!’s index update may not have been universally well-received - it happens - MSN’s seems to have produced a weird, temporary bug. SE Roundtable noticed yesterday a Digital Point thread pointing out that the top five search listings on the first two pages of MSN results were identical. One of MSN’s forum reps, “MSNdude,” popped in today to confirm an index update. No pain, no gain, right?
Topics: Search: News |