Yahoo Redesigns Front Page Options

[Critter]

I must say that I was shocked to see that Yahoo had changed its front page to focus almost exclusively on SEARCH rather than its trademarked directory. Yahoo must know that people are concentrating more on just blind searching than on going to a directory.

Funny thing is that, back when the net was much smaller than it is now, the going wisdom was that there was just too much information on the net for people to get any useable information from just blind searching.

The theory was that, when you got 50,000 search results, how could you tell what was useful and what wasn't. In fact I would say that Yahoo is Yahoo because of its directory. And, the Mining Company (now about.com) fetched a high price on the theory that its GUIDES would be the perfect filters for people looking for information.

Well, things must have changed. Again, Yahoo is in a much better position to know how people are looking for things on the net than anyone else.

I actually suggested, in confidence, to a certain search engine that it might think about putting some focus on LOCAL advertisers because I knew there was a lot of money in the NYC temp market (and I wasn't seeing any local advertisers on this search engine's site). Well, as we all know now, that search engine introduced local search and now Yahoo also has local search. In fact, I'm hearing that local search is the new big thang in searching.

Yahoo has gone one step farther than Google with its local search in that Yahoo has made its local search interactive, like this site is. If you search temp agencies on Yahoo local, you will get a list of temp agencies in whatever city you choose and the option to COMMENT on the temp agency. The only problem with this is that I did interactive local search FIRST.

You have to wonder now, why would any temp agency have to buy advertising space anywhere. With Google, Yahoo and Me all giving temp agencies free advertising, you have to wonder what will happen to the businesses that relied on charging temp agencies a fee to advertise? Fact is I was rather surprised recently to learn that the New York Times is making money since the Times seems to have lost most of the temp agency advertising that it once had.

another thing I find funny about the Times it that it refuses to recognize that net-temps.com exists. Net-temps.com seems to be the site responsible for taking most of the temp agency ads from the Times and, in the last 6 or so years, I don't think the Times has ever mentioned net-temps.com.