Yahoo Kicks Sand in Google’s Face Over Index Size
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Written By Reprise Media | August 9, 2005 | Share This
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My search engine can beat up your search engine.
The battle over who’s bigger and therefore better continues as Yahoo strikes the latest blow with the announcement that its search index has surpassed that of Google’s in terms of overall capacity.
Yahoo is claiming 20 billion documents, compared to Google’s 11.3 billion. A recent expansion effort is behind the new number, with Yahoo’s index previously weighing in somewhere around 8 billion items.
The Yahoo Search blog has more, including a nice recap of all the changes that have come about in the past year since the blog’s been launched.
As Charlene Li says, this is more of a marketing move than anything. Google has become synonymous with search and getting the word out about Yahoo’s bigger (and some will undoubtedly judge as better) index may convince fickle users to make the switch.
At the end of the day, relevancy and usefulness of results are what matter most. Considering that most searchers don’t go beyond the first page, these factors mean more than sheer size alone.
Even still, it’ll be interesting to see how the public reacts to headlines like this and this. Expect Google to strike back soon.
Topics: Yahoo! |