Yahoo Has The Answers, Google Still Searching

GOOGLE MAY BE THE KING of search, but in one area at least, Yahoo is kicking Google's can around the block. The upstart Yahoo Answers has blown by the venerable Google Answers (venerable at least by Internet time, having been around since May 2002), and seems to be drawing rave reviews from analysts and users alike. The service launched in December of 2005, and had its 10 millionth question posted in May. When it comes to share of the online answer market, it has amassed about 10 times the traffic that Google Answers has in the past 6 months, according to Hitwise.

Everything Old is New Again

Posting questions online is nothing new. Ask Jeeves' AnswerPoint was around long before either Google or Yahoo, starting in early 2000. But it never took off, and was wrapped up in May of 2002 (ironically, the same week Google Answers launched). According to Ask head Jim Lanzone, "AnswerPoint wasn't a failure, nor a smashing success." At the time, Ask Jeeves had to focus on things like the continuing integration of Teoma and the launch of Smart Answers (Ask's version of vertical shortcuts, a la Google's Onebox or Yahoo's Shortcuts), and decided to pull the plug on AnswerPoint. Lanzone remembers that "the user base was actually pretty upset about it; they were a very small, but very loyal group." LookSmart also went down this path with LookSmart Live, born in 1999 but long since faded away.

When it comes to Yahoo Answers, success seems to lie at the convergence of a number of tried and true online concepts. First of all, the answer service depends on community. Unlike Google, there's no cost to the service. It relies on its community to answer posted questions, giving it a viral vitality somewhat like a wiki or forum. Coming from Yahoo, it's of course categorized and searchable, giving users the opportunity to tap into the existing answer base to see if their question has already been answered. And it provides the wisdom of the masses, giving its community the ability to rate posted answers, thereby vouching for the reliability of the information.


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