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Author Topic: Yahoo to shutter Yahoo Answers  (Read 549 times)

jetboy

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Yahoo to shutter Yahoo Answers
« on: April 06, 2021, 08:07:08 PM »
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littleman

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Re: Yahoo to shutter Yahoo Answers
« Reply #1 on: April 07, 2021, 12:40:42 AM »
I find it odd that a company can't make all that ready (all be it mostly low quality) content into something profitable.
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ukgimp

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Re: Yahoo to shutter Yahoo Answers
« Reply #2 on: April 07, 2021, 01:16:21 AM »
Fire up the scrapers.
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Brad

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Re: Yahoo to shutter Yahoo Answers
« Reply #3 on: April 07, 2021, 11:28:07 AM »
Quote from: littleman on April 07, 2021, 12:40:42 AM
I find it odd that a company can't make all that ready (all be it mostly low quality) content into something profitable.

Either Mojeek or DDG lead me to a Yahoo Answers page recently and I couldn't remember the last time I'd been on Y! Answers.  So in answer to you question LM, I'm wondering how Google allows Yahoo Answers to rank in the organic results?  If Answers has been downgraded in favor of Google's own equivalent or some other answers type page that would kill a lot of traffic to Yahoo.
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littleman

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Re: Yahoo to shutter Yahoo Answers
« Reply #4 on: April 07, 2021, 09:38:23 PM »
That's a good point, I was thinking myself that it has been a very long time since I've come across Y Answers in G's results.  They have largely been replaced by quora, stackoverflow & reddit. 
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Brad

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Re: Yahoo to shutter Yahoo Answers
« Reply #5 on: April 08, 2021, 12:04:15 AM »
Google helped kill off Geocities (and other free hosted sites) from the early days of the web simply by moving them back about 10 pages in he serps.  It would not surprise me if they did it to Answers too.
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ergophobe

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Re: Yahoo to shutter Yahoo Answers
« Reply #6 on: April 08, 2021, 04:36:06 AM »
While looking for something else in some of my notes, i randomly came across this link

https://redstate.com/diary/barrypopik/2011/02/28/google-changes-its-algorithm-or-a-virtual-monopoly-destroys-my-web-traffic-by-40-overnight-and-i-have-no-recourse-n166809

He highlights something that I find incredibly frustrating about the Google algo and one of the proofs that it is, in at least some areas, atrocious: quote research. If you try to research a quote, you invariably get page after page after page with the quote with no attribution, while the rare really good page that does the work and finds the real source of the quote is almost impossible to find.

This thread puts me in mind of that because I don't think Google execs sat around plotting to destroy Geocities any more than the earth moving contractor working down the street sat around his house at night thinking about how he would kill thousands of ants with his bulldozer the next day. In other words, it's a juggernaut problem not a cabal problem and it really doesn't matter how good or bad Google is, the problem exists as a matter of lack of diversity.
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Brad

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Re: Yahoo to shutter Yahoo Answers
« Reply #7 on: April 08, 2021, 10:25:54 AM »
> bulldozer

This might be true.  The complaint about Geocities sites hogging the G serps came largely from SEO's and maybe corporate types.  In many ways, the free sites were a collective Wikipedia before Wikipedia was ever thought of.  They were established long before Google, the best were listed in Dmoz which Google leaned on heavily and the Geocities type sites were well linked together as a legacy of surfing the web before competent search engines.  This made the best of the free sites rock solid for the original PageRank.

They were also in the way.  Geocities webmasters were never going to buy Adwords. Paramount wanted their late to the web Star Trek site to rank higher than Fred's Trek Fansite and SEO's wanted to rank for words like Orlando and Miami to sell something and there was always a free website getting in the way.

I remember some sort of announcement at WmW, perhaps by a Google Minion, that the free hosted sites would no longer be cluttering up the serps.  And it happened.  It wasn't personal, it's just that Geocities, Tripod and such were in the way.  The free sites were there for fun and free exchange of knowledge but the web was turning commercial and needed to be paved over into the vast asphalt parking lot we have today.

> diversity

Spot on.  The lack of search engine diversity is a huge factor.
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Adam C

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Re: Yahoo to shutter Yahoo Answers
« Reply #8 on: April 08, 2021, 08:45:57 PM »
>>Geocities ....  In many ways, the free sites were a collective Wikipedia before Wikipedia was ever thought of.  They were established long before Google, the best were listed in Dmoz which Google leaned on heavily and the Geocities type sites were well linked together as a legacy of surfing the web before competent search engines.  This made the best of the free sites rock solid for the original PageRank.

So true.

My first web pages were on geocities back when I was in college and working out how to code.  They were awful pages, which made the myspace pages that emerged ~5-10 years later seem not overwhelmingly ugly.

My second batch of web-pages were also on geocities once I started making some money from the web.  I had a few that picked up natural(ish) Dmoz listings, and (whilst not looking) built up some decent PageRank (6 or 7 or so) as a consequence.  Wonderful discovery for cross linking to whatever my money sites of the day were.

Come to think of it - perhaps this zero-barrier to entry became a problem for G - with a significant pool of others milking Geocities opportunistically as I did - or (quite likely) more systematically
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