Yahoo is a web service provider that was extremely popular in the ’90s. Upon arriving on Yahoo’s website, you may think that it is just a news portal but it actually offers a wide range of services to this day, for example:
- entertainment
- finance
- groups (functions like forums)
- shopping
- weather
- developer network
However, one of its most popular services is Yahoo’s search engine. It appeared before Google and was human-powered at first. Later it was powered by Inktomi, Google, and Bing. The latter is still their web crawler. Yet, the search results on the same terms look different on Bing and Yahoo sometimes.
Yahoo is used mostly by people who use Yahoo mail and want more privacy since Yahoo is considered more secure and friendly towards user’s data.
Factors that Influence Rankings in Yahoo
Keywords
Yahoo pays more attention to what is happening on the page and less to extra factors like backlinking. It prefers high keyword density and a bit over-optimized pages, unlike Google.
Mentions on Social Media
Yahoo, which is powered by Bing, pays more attention to mentions on social media than Google. Or at least, they are more open about it.
Location
Yahoo is more likely to show local businesses and websites and Google goes for more popular and established ones worldwide.
