Posted by randfish

I feel bad for not reading Michael's blog more frequently. I used to be in relatively frequent touch but it's amazing how blogs can fall off your radar if you don't have them bookmarked. A couple weeks ago Michael had remarkable insight into how Yahoo! can overcome Google and use their strengths to create a better search and web experience:

I think that if Yahoo wants to end-run Google and others they need to head in a different direction. Yahoo's advantage over Google is in user engagement with multiple services. Remember the Hitwise data on Google's other services(chart below)? It showed that none of Google's services other than search were generating any real market share. Yahoo is a leader in categories such as Finance Autos Real Estate Shopping etc. but the problem is that they have old and staid properties that are not deeply engaging. To use a catch phrase that I do not like - Yahoo's sites are sooooo 1.0. In my opinion Yahoo got the engagement part right but picked the wrong segment by going after broad horizontal plays like Flickr...

... Yahoo can end-run Google with vertical depth that puts real context and content around advertising - not just the context of search terms in generic search. Pursuing deep vertical content plays feels to me like a better strategy than trying to one-up Google either in general search and CPC rates or by adding social features to the Yahoo portal. While I am sure Yahoo is concerned that many of these vertical properties are heavily dependent on Google's Search for traffic and Google has been rumored to remove links to companies that Yahoo acquires I still think the positives of vertical content acquisitions far outweigh the negatives for Yahoo. And were Google to remove the links well then Yahoo would have a better search experience as well.

It's brilliant thinking and hopefully something they're considering in Sunnyvale. Yahoo!'s strength on the content side has been waning and even though Michael thinks it might be expensive for them to build out great content portals but as those of us who play in the SEO field know it's a far cry cheaper than investing in new companies to the tune of $30 mil.

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