Yahoo Kills Blog Search, New Feed Platform May Be Coming
Yahoo has quietly killed its blog search engine, according to one report. I took a quick look at the Yahoo News site and have confirmed they did indeed remove the blog results from the right hand side of the page that had been there until recently. Kevin Burton, however, notices that some larger blogs like Defamer and Huffington Post are still being indexed in the news results. However, most blogs including mine are gone.
To me this is a sure sign that Yahoo is gearing up to launch an integrated feed reader/search engine the way Ask.com/Bloglines did in June. This is the second piece of evidence in the puzzle. In July I noticed a referral link in my server logs from "reader.yrank.feeds.yahoo.com."
When the revamped News Search launched last October, the integration of blogs was much ballyhooed. I am sure Yahoo still believes in blog search, but they're probably getting ready to roll out a whole new platform.
feeds.com is owned by some buy in british columbia.......
Posted by: Kevin Burton | Saturday, August 26, 2006 at 10:13 PM
Actually, the refer I saw in July was reader.yrank.feeds.yahoo.com. I corrected it as you were posting your comment
Posted by: Steve Rubel | Saturday, August 26, 2006 at 10:17 PM
I should develop this ability to predict upcoming services. So far, I'm only able to predict reactions to upcoming services.
Posted by: Mike Abundo | Saturday, August 26, 2006 at 10:57 PM
I am surprised about two things:
1. That they didn't really "notify" people that they were taking the product down.
AND
2. That they didn't leave it live until the "new" product went live.
As I used the news/blog search on a regular basis, I am mildly upset that they didn't really communicate the change(s) to their customers.
Posted by: Damon Billian | Sunday, August 27, 2006 at 08:18 PM
I use google every day, I am a big fan of it. But, now I am afraid google is going to compete with all small web design firms that offer webhosting for small business.
With this apps is obviously that they will soon or later will offer hosting for businesses.
So my question now. How do we all google partners should react and prepare?
Posted by: Engel Sanchez | Sunday, August 27, 2006 at 09:12 PM
Kudos to you Steve on this find. I found it later Saturday night (Sunday morning) and blogged about your entry. Seeing this news now hit Matt Cutts' Blog and Threadwatch, but they are attributing it to someone else's find -- someone who blogged about it AFTER you. Might not mean a whole bunch, but all of us here who read your blog know who broke this one first. :)
Posted by: Liana Evans | Monday, August 28, 2006 at 06:45 AM