Warmest Greetings,

:: Wednesday, October 08, 2003 ::

There's no nail in Yahoo's coffin or a memorial service in sight. Yahooverature is the latest installment in the ever-changing Yahoo! search engine drama.

In a way, I find myself curious enough about Yahoo!'s partner with 'em, dump 'em, acquire them, dump 'em business strategy. Yet none of this has made me want to use the search portal.

So, for the heck of it, I went to Yahoo! and typed in "usability reviews". To my delight, the 8th position goes directly to information about the usability reviews I perform for testing company, Site-Report.com.

But wait! When I run a search for "usability reviews" in Google, the Site-Report usability review page comes up in the same 8th position. (Maybe this will change when Yahoo! reverts back to Inktomi results.)

Both Google and Yahoo! offer paid inclusion and buy your position ads. Both have Directories and Shopping and News. I've been having a hard time finding a reason to choose Yahoo! over Google as the search engine I reach for first. Until recently, that is.

This discussion in Cre8asiteForums may help swing my vote to Yahoo!. Hot on the heels of the Do Not Talk About Ad$ense Because We Made The Rules and We Never Intended to Be Fair To You (see Shut Up and Serve Ad$ ), comes How did this get indexed?

"And the toolbar, like the adsense program, invites Google into areas that we might not necessarily want them to be, and gives them the ability to measure things we might not necessarily want to share with them."

I remember when we got "just a few junk emails" and for the most part, we hit the delete button on these little irritants. Now, we do battle every day, to the tune of billions of dollars, managing email trash.

I remember when people were afraid to make purchases on the Internet because they were afraid of everything from fraud to bad customer service. Great measures were taken to convince the public to shop online. Nowadays, many people don't shop any other way.

And now we have ghost invaders - those things you can't see but they're still there - waiting to cripple your computer, or monitor your buying or searching habits, or record every web page you visit. How much covert privacy invasion is truly happening and how much of it is simply rumor and paranoia?

Like I said, I remember when junk email was mildly aggravating. Will I look back someday and say "I remember when Google was ethical"?

Related:

Google CEO speaks out on future of search. "The primary mission of Google is to get you what you want, rather than what someone thinks you want," Schmidt said."

Other stuff:

Go fish. Red Herring.com is now online.

Brightmail says 54% of your email is crap. Only 1% is spiritual. Well, duh. God's ways are supposed to be mysterious.

If you've read this far, here's your reward. A Case Study in Shopping Cart Usability. "This investigation lead us to draw up a list of dos and don'ts related to shopping carts."

Thanks for visiting Cre8pc.com.

:: posted by Kim Krause Berg on 10/08/2003 01:45:40 PM

:: Today's Post Permalink | Back to the BLOG Home
:: Website Evaluations
:: Email this Post  
:.................................

Feed Bin

Learn how to make RSS Feed Buttons

Highly Recommended!
(Read review)
Search Engine Marketing Kit, by Dan Thies

• User Centered Design
• Usability Industry Research
• Increase Website Conversions
• Starter Ecommerce Checklist

• Web Design & The Usability Effect
• Usability and SEO Humor

Crooked sunglasses

My artistic friends love this picture.

• About Kim Krause Berg
• My Articles
• Me Again (My Fave Blog Posts)
• August 2005 : Expanding on Usability - An Interview with Kim Krause Berg
• Kim's Wish List

Recent Posts

Today's fun-filled walk around the Internet brough...

The kids don't have school today, so I'm in my hom...

If you have Google Ad$ense ads on your sites, this...

I still don't trust them. LookSmart launched its o...

There's many ways to run a forums and many styles ...

If you search the 'Net using Google a zillion time...

This week's High Rankings Advisor newsletter runs ...

This is too hot to hide underneath your Internet r...

I knew if I complained publically in my Blog, Cho...

Still no Google AdSense. Not sure if the folks at...

Monthly Archives

It's That Book Again

Conversions Topic is New York Times Best Seller (Seriously)

Kim is a Member of the Usability Professionals Association

"This report exceeded my expectations. After reading it a few times, I went through and highlighted those parts of your actionable advice that I want to implement right away... I ended up highlighting most of the report. Stellar job. I won't hesitate to recommend you to one of my own clients." -- Andy Hagans of AndyHagans.com

"I have implemented the most obvious changes and I suppose the fact that we've seen an immediate increase in sales/conversions is no coincidence. I'd highly recommend your service to anyone running a serious web based business." -- Steve Clay, Plumeriabay.com

"As soon as we get our hands on one of her usability studies, my clients and I have a better understanding of what needs to be done with their sites to make them the best they can be from their site visitors' perspective."
-- Jill Whalen, HighRankings.com

"This is an exemplary piece of work." -- Rand Fishkin, SEOMoz.org

View more Testimonials | Clients
Learn about Website improvement services.