Why do people prefer Google over Yahoo! for searching?

Well you make some very good points and some inaccurate points. Google's minimalist approach as opposed to Yahoo!'s throw so much information at you that you couldn't possibly digest it all makes many people, including me prefer it. If you like having information on your home page Google offers personalized home pages. Google's home page however does load faster than Yahoo's. I think that Google's minamalist approach is beautiful and very professional looking. Sometimes less is more.

To your last question, yes. People are using yahoo for its serivce and using Google as their search engine. Yahoo has many things like Yahoo! Mail that have a much lager user base than Googles Gmail since Yahoo! Mail has been in existance far longer than Gmail. Yahoo also has this nifty thing called Yahoo answers.

Hope that helps...

I would want you to do a exhasutive qualtitative analysis of the search results of these 2 engines. I personally feel that the probability of giving more accurate results is more in Google than in Yahoo, but by a very small margin. Hence Yahoo can still compete neck-to-neck with the God in the search business.

Another reason is the reputation Google has already earned. We all keep saying this everyday - Google Is God ! It's too difficult to remove this image from people's mind.

And when we are talking about search business, why do you bother about the page design, news and the advertisments? Yahoo is a multi-faceted website unlike Google which is a pure search website. What else you need in the homepage apart from the logo, textbox and the search button !

Google's look is so much simpler to use, and Yahoo just makes a giant process of out of everything that Google makes a simple search. Futhermore Google has less ads... and so you can almost use Google without the interference of an advert.

Google also offers free personalised pages, where you can add news, gmail, games.... and loads of other things: just click on personalised homepage on the top right.

"Googling" as become an everyday term - much like the term Kleenex - Kleenex is the Kimberly-Clark brand of facial tissue - and is just one of several brands of tissue.

Yet...

Do you ask a friend for a facial tissue or a Kleenex?

Do they say sorry we only have generic facial tissue or do they just hand you the box because they know you want a facial tissue and likely don't care about who made it and what brand name it has.

Both are tools.

As to preference, I use both, and others, when doing searches. Most of the results appear on any/all of the searches of course, but sometime the information I need only shows up on one search. Most often that search result was not on Yahoo, and sometimes not even on Goggle...

Just tools... learn to use 3 or 4 types of the tools, ...more work of course but.... better results.

because all the search engines are basically crawling the same these days it comes down to feel

there are less advertisments on a google search results page, and it is overall less cluttered. there is more text off the pages you are crawling.

its psychological too, less clutter and easy to use.. the homepage for google is very simple and straightforward, and is a very simple html write up which means it will load on a slow computer

You can make a personal google page with Gmail, a calender of search history, etc. that is easier and and more intuitive to use than yahoo. Also, google has specific search engines like google earth browser, google code search, google scholar, etc. that yahoo doesn't have. For multimedia, though, altavista is much more complete and has more search options than google and yahoo. Also, dogpile and other websites that use multiple search engines (incl google & yahoo) are useful for hard-to-find items.

Haven't tried Google yet but am close to switching from Yahoo. Yahoo is in trouble because they don't respond to complaints from their subscribers. Good example is a "Adobe Flash Player Settings" box that appears in many videos. It is a pain, you can't shut it off, and if you try your computer freezes up. Many complaints to Yahoo about this results in a "we're working on it" answer but nothing gets done. Yahoo's stock is down, advertising revenue is down, they've had 5 CEOs in 7 years. Obviously somethings wrong in Yahoo land. I remember people calling a simpleton a Yahoo. Guess they picked the right name for their company.

Hi awrhodes84,

Very good question. :)

I wonder the same think too.

But most people say that Google has more information and it faster.

Google is faster, more complete, easier to query and provides more complete answers.