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Following Yahoo to a Wealth of Traffic
By Mark Daoust (c) 2006

Consider Yahoo the first major casualty of the search engine
wars. Yahoo has admitted
(http://blog.searchenginewatch.com/blog/060124-073511) that
they cannot reasonably expect to take away any significant
amount of the search market share from Google, so they have
chosen to be happy as the second most visited search engine
on the Internet.

On the surface, this may seem strange. Why would Yahoo ever
publicly announce that they are 'throwing in the towel' in the
search engine war? That would be similar to Pepsi recommending
that people drink their product only if Coca-Cola is not
available. From a business standpoint, it is absolutely
ridiculous and makes absolutely no sense.

But be careful to not read into this too far. Yahoo may have
tipped their hat to Google as being dominant in the traditional
search engine market, but this does not mean that they are
giving up the fight for Internet users' attention. In fact, for
some time now, Yahoo has been moving towards a market which is
quickly emerging as being just as powerful as search engines
currently are.

Yahoo Moves to Web 2.0 Style Websites

In a few of the articles published here at Site Reference we
have mentioned Web 2.0 (http://www.site-reference.com/articles/
Website-Development/Web-2-0-Fad-or-the-Future.html) and how Yahoo
seems to be following this development trend, but we have never
looked into why Yahoo is so fascinated by Web 2.0.

As most of you probably know, Yahoo launched My Web 2.0
(http://myweb2.search.yahoo.com/), a public bookmarking service,
along with acquiring Del.icio.us (http://del.icio.us/), a
well-established public bookmarking service. Yahoo also launched
Yahoo Answers (http://answers.yahoo.com/), a service which
relies on a community of users to answer questions that the same
community asks.

There is a common trend with all of these services - they all
rely on the input from a vast community. Del.icio.us works well
because it relies on thousands of people deciding which websites
are important rather than relying on one person's (or one
algorithm's) opinion. This is the entire idea behind a
folksonomy (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Folksonomy) driven
website - that when enough votes are tallied, the general public
will decide which websites are important to specific topics,
and which websites are not worth taking the time to bookmark.

An Alternative to Search Engines

Search engines provide a very simple service: they unite web
users with a website that matches their current interest. It
just so happens, however, that services like My Web 2.0 and
Del.icio.us (public bookmarking services) have the ability to do
the exact same thing - and possibly in a more effective and
timely manner.

Suppose you want to find new resources for SEO. You could spend
your time using the keyword "SEO" in Google
(http://www.google.com/search?q=seo&start=0&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8)
in a regular web search, but the results for such a competitive
term tend to remain fairly static over time. An alternative
would be to look at what people are tagging as "SEO" at a
service like Del.ico.us (http://del.icio.us/seo). Here you are
presented with an entirely new list of pages that are (for the
most part) relevant to what you are looking for, and are
certainly filled with fresh, up-to-date information.

The information at a public bookmarking service is not
necessarily always going to be the most complete, but it is the
information that web users, as a collective unit, have
determined to be worth visiting. In this way, public bookmarking
services are more effective than search engines in filtering out
which content is important, and which content is not worth
reading (or even outright spam).

Add the fact that these results are available in RSS form and
you suddenly can be presented with the hottest information on
your topic that the web has to offer. I personally subscribe to
feeds that look at "Google", "Yahoo", "SEO", and other topics
that are relevant for my day to day life.

Obviously public bookmarking is not evolved enough for every
industry. As it stands now, most of the quality information that
you can get through a service like Del.icio.us relates to more
technical fields, such as programming or photography. But as
more people bookmark their favorite sites, the more a service
like Del.icio.us will grow useful.

What Does This Have To Do With Yahoo! - And How Does It Help
Me?

Traditionally, when there is a market that is worth exploring
for traffic, Yahoo! has been there. When Hotmail was released,
Yahoo answered with their email program. When Monster.com became
popular, Yahoo acquired HotJobs. With every major traffic
generating innovation, Yahoo seems to get involved.

This raises the question - if Yahoo is content with remaining in
second place in the search market, and at the same time being
active in the Web 2.0 market by buying social bookmarking sites,
launching their own social bookmarking service, launching Yahoo!
Answers, etc., shouldn't we as website owners look to these
services as a way to promote our businesses?

Everyone knows that you should optimize your website for the
search engines, but how many people take the time to optimize
their websites for bookmarking services? Not very many people
consider trying to work their way up to the top of these
websites, but they are actually missing out on a significant
source of traffic.

Darren Rowse of ProBlogger (http://www.problogger.net/) talked
about how much traffic he received from getting to the front
page of Del.ico.us (http://www.problogger.net/archives/2006/01/06/
7-ways-to-guarantee-getting-to-the-top-of-the-delicious-popular-page/).
In the end, he saw 8,000 visitors in one day from that front
page exposure and garnered a number of external links from it
as well. Imagine just how much traffic a website could receive
by constantly being near the top on a website like Del.ico.us.

Getting to the top of public bookmarking sites is not easy (just
as SEO is not easy), but the reward is significant. Unlike SEO,
getting to the top of a public bookmarking service is truly a
viral way of marketing your website. Not only will you receive
the benefit of being exposed in a very public place, but those
who have put you there will talk about your website on their
sites, and grow your business virally.

Who knows - public bookmarking may just overtake traditional
search as a source for your traffic.
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Mark Daoust is the owner of Site Reference
(http://www.site-reference.com). If you want to reference this
article, please reference it at its original published location:
(http://www.site-reference.com/articles/Search-Engines/
Following-Yahoo-to-a-Wealth-of-Traffic.html)
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