As many of us Internet marketers look from the sidelines as acquisition and takeover talks swirl about Yahoo! I cannot help but to think back at a seemingly small yet significant mistake Yahoo! made in recent months.
When, how and most important WHY did Yahoo! remove the numbering as part of their search listings? Huh? What? What’s the big deal, you ask?
For the last several years I have been nothing short of impressed by the fact that Yahoo! searches have always had a higher conversion rate than Google searches for my clients. When I say my clients I do not mean a few of them. I do not mean some of them. I do not even mean most of them. I mean ALL of them. The conversion rates on Yahoo! have always been higher than the conversion rates on Google.
I have pondered this reality for quite some time and came to the conclusion that people did general research and searching on Google but then turned to Yahoo! when they were ready to buy. So the question was…Why?
After speaking to many different web users in an unscientific and unofficial survey (which most often prove more effective than the costly scientific surveys that prove nothing more) I concluded that the searchers felt more secure and confident in the results on Yahoo! because they were numbered. That’s right those little numbers meant a lot to millions or hundreds of millions of searchers.
We all know that Internet users equate ranking with quality. Though this is not necessarily the case, it is the perception that counts in the online success game. People liked seeing the number ranking. It made them feel more confident. It made their search results seem more legitimate than the massive results they got from Google. Of course, very often the results are quite similar and the same number of sites will come up (1,000 or less), however, people were more comfortable with the numbered listings.
So, I come back to the question. Why did Yahoo! make such a seemingly insignificant yet quite significant mistake? And more important, when will they bring back the numbers?
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