The Yahoo news is old but it keeps surfacing throughout the media. Is Yahoo serious about making a comeback?

The jury is still out. Why? Money. Don’t you remember a decade ago when both Y & Google spent billions in broadcast TV advertising? Deep pockets and a simplified message propelled G to dominate.

When you’re building a brand, you have a choice: spend money or generate grassroots exposure. The problem with Y making a legitimate comeback is a tall order. My take is they first need to clean up their freak show value message. Hmmm…how so?

Well, for starters search is about what? Duh, search. Get people to where they want to go. Not try to sell them on the idea of using your search engine as well as thinking about your brand as a one-stop shop. Google’s brand is clean and propelled by simplicity. One product drives their trust and credibility by giving people exactly what they need:


It’s an obvious no-brainer, they get it. They built their brand providing the benefit of specificity. Then added support products (i.e. PPC, YouTube, docs, yadda) to monetize and grow a following.

Now take Y and their freak show site:


As you can see, they’re grasping at straws trying to be all things to all users. With a media glitch catch.

It seems Y is all hunky dory on jamming together advertising, news and plenty of social-needy links (i.e. finance, weather, games). So instead of handing users what they want (search), they’ve become addicts offering everything except the kitchen sink above the fold.

The other problem I have with Y is their search algorithm is a joke. Working in SEO full-time since 2007, I can assure you it’s a borderline cake walk to get a client ranked on Y. But the problem is there’s too few eye balls using Y. So it’s a big fish in a shallow puddle type dealio.

I’m all for competition. But based on the tiny marketshare Y currently retains (11.1%) compared to G & Bing (66%; 18%), it’s kind of a pipe dream they’ll be gaining traction.

Don’t fall for the old SEO trick when they tell you ranking on Y &B equals what you’ll get from G. It’s crap. G’s 66% marketshare (with more than 1.3 billion visitors a month) is the only way to drive your business.

But how do you get ranked on Google? It takes industrial-strength relevancy factors. Read this to learn how.