Last week, Yahoo! admitted that Google has a stranglehold on the search engine market and that they can not do anything to change that. Essentially, they announced that they were content with being #2 in the search engine wars.
This announcement may have surprised many people, but there is an underlying logic in it. For one thing, all is not lost if Yahoo! does not attain the coveted #1 position in the search market. Though search is an undeniably important aspect of their business, it is not their only facet by any stretch of the imagination. In fact, Yahoo! has recently stepped up their pursuit of domination in another market that may prove to be profitable not only for themselves but for site owners as well.
Yahoo! has shown clear signs of interest in expanding its reign in Web 2.0. Bookmarking services seem to have become an important and exciting aspect of this trend and Yahoo! has not been slow in picking up on it. My Web 2.0 was launched by the number 2 search giant, which also acquired del.icio.us, a popular public bookmarking service that allows users to tag sites under specified topics. Yahoo! Answers is a service that allows users to answer questions that are asked by other users. All of these services are highly dependent on the users of the service and their input.
What makes these services attractive is their dependence on their users. This allows them to give search results that are based on a group of people and their discernment between which sites are relevant and helpful and which ones are not. Search engines rely on one person or algorithm’s opinion, which can often lead to irrelevant sites being shown on a results page.
Though they perform the same basic task of presenting a user with a variety of websites relevant to their query, public bookmarks and search engines are quite different. With the growing prevalence of splogs, and other spam sites, the potential for public bookmarking services to give results in a more helpful and efficient manner grows just the same.
Admittedly, public bookmarking sites are not equally developed for every topic and industry out there. Technical fields are probably the most developed and thorough so far, but other fields are bound to catch up sooner than later, and this only adds to public bookmarking’s potential.
All of this holds significance not only for Yahoo! and other Web giants, but for site owners as well. Search engine optimization (SEO) has helped site owners get their sites further up in page rankings, and it has become an intricate and significant aspect of the Web. However, with public bookmarking on the horizon of widespread popularity it becomes of great importance to know how to work a site’s bookmarking ranking.
Sites that are at the top of these bookmarking sites will get a considerable amount of traffic and exposure, not only from the actual bookmarking site but also from external links. SEO is relatively formulaic and concrete in nature, but public bookmarking optimization is not. It relies heavily, if not wholly, on viral marketing. Once a site garners a top spot on a public bookmarking site they will obtain the attention of a huge number of users, who will then spread the word through their sites or blogs, not to mention word-of-mouth.
By taking a step back from the search engine front, Yahoo! may become the leader in the folksonomy realm of the Web.
As Yahoo! and other sites continue to push Web 2.0 and the public bookmarking service, the traffic resulting from these sites will become significant and may present a new primary target for site owners.
Source:
http://www.site-reference.com/articles/
Search-Engines/Following-Yahoo-to-a-
Wealth-of-Traffic.html
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