A pretty vexing question, isn’t it? Reams of newsprint and kilobytes of data have been written on this and my blog entry is going to join the list now. This isn’t the final answer, and never will be.
So which one is better (according to me, of course)? I have noticed a few things. Google takes longer time to crawl (i.e., index) pages, compared to Yahoo!. Also, among pages already indexed, I have noticed that Yahoo! Search crawls even lesser known pages pretty frequently. Just having a bigger index (Google’s claim) I think, is not reason enough to crawl slowly. As a user I expect updated results. Many users don’t know that searches are not current, but have been indexed earlier. In this era of ever changing information, this is very crucial.
Going on to the searches themselves, Yahoo! Search has more variety than Google. I’ll discuss this later on. Yahoo! sends back results faster than Google. Its ‘My Web’ is great way to tag sites while searching. Also, I find Yahoo! Search’s results much more relevant to my query than Google. Actually, this may be due to Google’s early success; people use search engine optimization technology fine-tuned to come higher in the order of results on Google.
Currently, I think that Yahoo!’s development projects in beta, like ‘My Web’, Y!Q, Audio, Video, Subscriptions, Creative Commons, etc. are more required by users than Google’s.
Coming back to add-on searches, Yahoo! Photo Search is miles ahead of Google’s. It offers more ways to filter results and also gives back more and relevant results. Google pales in comparison, although I must praise its adult-filter for working properly, unlike Yahoo! which sometimes shows results you wouldn’t want a child to see even on innocent queries like ‘Greenpeace’.
Talking about video search, I think nobody disputes that Yahoo! Video Search is oodles better, in terms of volume and quality.
Right now, my vote goes to Yahoo! – Yahoo!! Search is much better than Google.
Think differently? Then go ahead and add your comments!