2008-07-16T10:36:00.000-07:00

YAHOO SECRET 1

Yahoo! Site/Service URL

Yahoo! Loan Center loan.yahoo.com
Yahoo! Lottery Results lottery.yahoo.com
Yahoo! Mail mail.yahoo.com
Yahoo! Mail Plus mailplus.yahoo.com
Yahoo! Maps maps.yahoo.com
Yahoo! Message Boards messages.yahoo.com
Yahoo! Messenger messenger.yahoo.com
Yahoo! Mobile mobile.yahoo.com
Yahoo! Movies movies.yahoo.com
Yahoo! News news.yahoo.com
Yahoo! PayDirect paydirect.yahoo.com
Yahoo! People Search people.yahoo.com
Yahoo! Personals personals.yahoo.com
Yahoo! Pets pets.yahoo.com
Yahoo! Photos photos.yahoo.com
Yahoo! Picture Gallery gallery.yahoo.com
Yahoo! Products Search products.yahoo.com
Yahoo! Real Estate realestate.yahoo.com
Yahoo! Shopping shopping.yahoo.com
Yahoo! Small Business smallbusiness.yahoo.com
Yahoo! Sports sports.yahoo.com
Yahoo! Store store.yahoo.com
Yahoo! Tax Center taxes.yahoo.com
Yahoo! Travel travel.yahoo.com
Yahoo! TV tv.yahoo.com
Yahoo! Wallet wallet.yahoo.com
Yahoo! Weather weather.yahoo.com
Yahoo! Web Hosting webhosting.yahoo.com

YAHOO SECRET 2

Yahoo! Web Site Directory

Yahoo! Site/Service URL
Yahoo! home page www.yahoo.com
Yahooligans! www.yahooligans.com
My Yahoo! my.yahoo.com
Yahoo! Address Book address.yahoo.com
Yahoo! Astrology astrology.yahoo.com
Yahoo! Auctions auctions.yahoo.com
Yahoo! Autos autos.yahoo.com
Yahoo! Banking Center banking.yahoo.com
Yahoo! Bookmarks bookmarks.yahoo.com
Yahoo! Briefcase briefcase.yahoo.com
Yahoo! Buzz Index buzz.yahoo.com
Yahoo! by Phone phone.yahoo.com
Yahoo! Calendar calendar.yahoo.com
Yahoo! Chat chat.yahoo.com
Yahoo! Classifieds classifieds.yahoo.com
Yahoo! Companion (toolbar) companion.yahoo.com
Yahoo! Education education.yahoo.com
Yahoo! Entertainment entertainment.yahoo.com
Yahoo! Fantasy Sports fantasysports.yahoo.com
Yahoo! Finance finance.yahoo.com
Yahoo! Games games.yahoo.com
Yahoo! GeoCities geocities.yahoo.com
Yahoo! Get Local local.yahoo.com
Yahoo! Greetings greetings.yahoo.com
Yahoo! Groups groups.yahoo.com
Yahoo! Health health.yahoo.com
Yahoo! HotJobs hotjobs.yahoo.com
Yahoo! Insurance Center insurance.yahoo.com
Yahoo! Launch (music) launch.yahoo.com

YAHOO SECRETS 3

So if you want to go to Yahoo! Travel, enter travel! into the search box and then
click the Search button. If you want to go to Yahoo! Mail, enter mail!. You get
the picture.

The Yahoo! Directory Has HigherQuality
Results than Yahoo! Web

Search—but Fewer of Them
Yahoo! was created as a hand-picked directory of Web sites. Over the past
decade, however, the Yahoo! directory has become a less and less important
part of the Yahoo! pantheon of services—to the point where many users don’t
even know the directory exists. After all, if you use the search box on the
Yahoo! home page—which Yahoo! obviously wants you to do—you pass over
the directory entirely.
That’s too bad, because the Yahoo! directory is actually a pretty good assemblage
of what’s out there on the Web. It’s also arguably the easiest search site
for Web surfers to use.
It all boils down to the basic difference between a directory and a search index.
You see, there are two approaches to organizing all the information on the
World Wide Web. One approach is to use a special type of software program
(called a spider or crawler) to roam the Web automatically, feeding what it finds
back to a massive bank of computers. These computers hold indices of the
Web—in some cases, entire Web pages are indexed; in other cases, only the
titles and important words on a page are indexed. This approach is the one
taken by the big search engines, such as Google, AltaVista, and HotBot—and
by Yahoo!’s Web Search feature
The other approach—the one taken by the Yahoo! directory—is to have actual
human beings physically look at each Web page and stick each one into a
hand-picked category. After you get enough Web pages collected, you have
something called a directory.
Unlike a search engine, a directory doesn’t search the entire Web—in fact, a
directory catalogs only a very small part of the Web. But a directory is very
organized, and very easy to use, and lots and lots of people use Web directories
(such as Yahoo!) every day.
Of course, that’s not to say that the Yahoo! directory is perfect. Far from it. For
starters, it’s small—only 2 million pages, versus 3 billion or so in Yahoo!’s Googlesupplied
Web Search index. (That means that Yahoo!’s directory content represents
less than 1/10 of 1 percent of the total number of pages currently published on
the Web—not very comprehensive at all.)
Fortunately, you don’t have to limit yourself to the listings in the Yahoo! directory;
Yahoo! supplements its directory listings with search results from a thirdparty
search engine. Read on to learn another little secret about Yahoo!’s search
capabilities.

YAHOO SECRET 4

When You Search Yahoo!, You’re Searching Google

Okay, Yahoo! is known for its high-quality and well-organized Web directory.
But when you use Yahoo!’s Web Search feature, you bypass the directory
entirely and instead retrieve results supplied by a third-party search engine.
That’s right. When you use the search box on Yahoo!’s home page, you’re not
searching Yahoo!—you’re searching Google.
For some time now, Yahoo! has supplemented its directory listings with results
from a partner search engine. Early on, Yahoo! offered results from the Inktomi
search engine. Today, Yahoo! uses results provided by Google.
The contract that Yahoo! has with Google is not open-ended, which means
that when the current contract expires, it’s possible that Yahoo! might go
with a different search index provider—such as Inktomi, which Yahoo! purchased
in March of 2003, or AllTheWeb or AltaVista, which Yahoo! acquired
later the same year. So it wouldn’t take a great stretch of the imagination to

YAHOO SECRETS 5

World Yahoo! Web Address

Argentina ar.yahoo.com
Asia asia.yahoo.com
Australia and New Zealand au.yahoo.com
Brazil br.yahoo.com
Canada ca.yahoo.com
Catalan ct.yahoo.com
China cn.yahoo.com
Chinese (U.S. site in Chinese) chinese.yahoo.com
Denmark dk.yahoo.com
France fr.yahoo.com
Germany de.yahoo.com
Hong Kong hk.yahoo.com
India in.yahoo.com
Italy it.yahoo.com
Japan www.yahoo.co.jp
Korea kr.yahoo.com
Mexico mx.yahoo.com
Norway no.yahoo.com
Singapore sg.yahoo.com
Spain es.yahoo.com
Spanish (U.S. site in Spanish) espanol.yahoo.com
Sweden se.yahoo.com
Taiwan tw.yahoo.com
U.K. and Ireland uk.yahoo.com