The Four-eyed Journal » Yahoo

Bing takes #2 spot from Yahoo! in US Search Engine Wars - Google remains on the number one spot

jhay — Tue, 14 Sep 2010 15:37:46 +0000

New data from Nielsen says that Microsoft’s Bing/Live search has overtaken Yahoo! as the #2 search engine in the United States.

For the first time, MSN/Windows Live/Bing Search overtook Yahoo! as the #2 search engine in the U.S. with a 13.9% share of search volume in August 2010, a 0.25% delta increase from the previous month. Although Google saw little change in its month-over-month search volume, it still dominates the search market, accounting for 65% of all U.S. searches.

And it’s not because Google had suffered a decline when it has stayed put with 65.1% of the US search market. Simply because Yahoo! has been on a decline as a search engine in recent years. Yuga has taken notice too, commenting that Yahoo! has started to focus on being an internet portal rather than a search engine with its recent activities.

Recall that Microsoft and Yahoo! had a deal in 2009 where Microsoft would power Yahoo! search and this has started just last month. Does the future mean that Yahoo!’s search engine will be absorbed or sold off to Microsoft? They tried back in 2008 but things fell apart between the two companies, much to the jubilation of Google. But they can always try again right?

How to use Gmail with Yahoo! Groups

jhay — Thu, 03 Jan 2008 14:07:17 +0000

We all know that Yahoo! Mail is still the most popular web mail service around and even though thousands us have made the switched to Gmail, there would still come a time that we would a Yahoo! Account for some of the services we sign up or use.

Among this is that classic mail-list service called Yahoo! Groups. Almost any group or organization has used this service for their group communication and mail-subscription needs.

College students and their professors are some of the most regular users of this and since most are still With Yahoo! Mail, Yahoo! Groups becomes the default choice for a group mailing list service.

Gmail users like me, fret not. For there is a way to bridge the gap and let us join any Yahoo! Group; send and receive messages to and from the group using our beloved Gmail accounts.

Here’s how.

When you receive the invitation to join a Yahoo! Group, simply click on the join button and you’d be taken to the Yahoo! Sign-in page. This is where you would need your old Yahoo! account ID and password. Of course if you don’t you could always sign-up for a new one, just for the purpose of joining this Yahoo! Group.
Once you’ve logged into Yahoo! Groups using your Yahoo! account, you’ll be taken to the Edit Membership page. In step 1, find “Email Address” section and below your Yahoo! email address, there’s a link that says “Add new email address“. Click on it and you’ll proceed to the third step.

Once inside the ‘Add Email Address‘ page, enter the Gmail account you want to use with this Yahoo! Account and Group. Once you’ve completed the form, an verification email will be sent to the Gmail account you’ve just entered in.

Login to your Gmail account, look for the verification email from Yahoo! and complete the verification process by simply clicking the link provided in there.
Once you’ve verified the Gmail address, you would again be taken back into the ‘Edit Membership‘ page inside the Yahoo! Groups section. You would then see that your Gmail address is among the addresses you could with this Yahoo! Group. Click on that and complete the rest of the process.

If all goes well, and it should, you would see a confirmation page that says you’ve become a member of that Yahoo! Group and you’re still going to use your awesome Gmail account.

This same process could be used if you want to again change the email address you’re going to use with this or any other Yahoo! Group. It would also come in handy if you decide to leave the group for whatever reasons, (usually when the spam has infested the group!) or use a non-Gmail address.

All in all, this gives you the best of both worlds, Yahoo! Groups and your beloved Gmail account.

Faster search: Yahoo Search Suggest

jhay — Sun, 15 Jul 2007 23:52:46 +0000

From the Yahoo! Search Blog; Search Suggest on Yahoo.com

Kevin Lee writes:

It works like this: When you do a search on Yahoo!, you’ll automatically be given suggestions based on what you have typed – as you’re typing. So, not only does this limit the number of words you need to type into a query, it may also present similar queries to shorten your searching time and get to what you’re looking for quicker. Search Suggest isn’t new, just new to Yahoo.com.

This is another neat feature that will speed up your Yahoo! searches. A similar feature is already built-in to the Google Toolbar for Firefox which is really handy especially if you’re searching for something you’re not certain of.

Checked out Google’s homepage to see if they have the same feature already up and running and no, it’s still not. C’mon Google! Yahoo! has scored one on you?

My friend would certainly be delighted with this because he has started to use Yahoo! more for his searches instead of Google. He argues that he doesn’t like what results Google throws at him. Most of the time, the page he’s really looking for is somewhere down the first page, all the other pages/sites higher up were either blogs or SEO-ed pages he really doesn’t need.

Could he be right that Google has been ‘bombed’ too much?

How does the Gmail for your domain works?

jhay — Sat, 15 Jul 2006 15:04:11 +0000

Okay, I was so ecstatic with my post announcing that Gmail is now servicing my .com.ph e-mail accounts that it has left some readers (I deeply thank each and every one of you ) wondering how does it really work or how can one get Gmail working for their domain as well. I actually want to thank Rob for motivating me to share this experience for today’s post which is quite long and is divided into two parts:

First part:

Second part:

How Gmail for your domain greatly improves this system/process

Alright then, a little background info about e-mails and domains, from my experience and understading of course. Experts in this field can freely point out corrections in the comment thread below. There are two kinds of e-mail, free webmail and the not free webmail. The free webmail, like Yahoo! MSN’s Hotmail, Walla.com, and of course the cool Google or Gmail are just some examples in which a user could sign up for a free account. No more need to get your own domain, because you will get yourusername@Yahoo or Google or Hotmail etc .com. There is also no need for you to get your own webhost account as well, since the companies mentioned before offer that for free.

On the other hand, if you want to have your own e-mail address named after the domain of your choice you need to have your own domain + hosting which are provided by Ploghost.com, Dreamhost.com and NokiAHost.com etc and this is what I call the not free webmail.

The not free webmail is the e-mail service you get once you apply and pay for your own webhost + domain, example is this .com.ph domain. The domain http://jrocas.com.ph is sponsored by use.com.ph while the webhosting is sponsored by Ploghost.com, and so I could now create e-mail accounts with the addresses ending in name@jrocas.com.ph like jhay [at] jrocas [dot] com [dot] ph. Below is a screenshot of the e-mail accounts I’m referring to when viewed inside the Cpanel for your own domain + hosting.

Since it is hosted in your own domaim, it will be using up the disk space that comes with your webhosting package, usually 10MB should be enough (like in the sample in above photo), and to manage all the e-mails you send and recieve you can choose from either Horde or Squirrel Mail both are free and open-source webmail packages that comes built-in for your own domain + hosting. I find Horde easier to use but it’s really a matter of personal preferences. Below is the screenshot of the default webmail services I’ve mentioned, again once you logged in to your domain e-mail.

Since I got my .com.ph domain + hosting, I’ve been using Horde only to setup the mail forwarding settings which I will go to in detail later on. In the meantime, here is what it looks like inside Horde.

Everything clear so far? Alright then, now since I got my free Gmail account (jhaykage [at] gmail [dot] com) before I got my .com.ph domain + hosting and I’ve decided to use my new .com.ph e-mail: jhay [at] jrocas [dot] com [dot] ph as my default e-mail address, I need to move all of my contacts and important messages from the Gmail account to the new .com.ph e-mail account.

But I don’t want to do that, I want the best of both worlds. I want to keep using Gmail with all of its cool features and mindblowing storage space (over 2 GB and still counting!) while using my new jhay [at] jrocas [dot] com [dot] ph address all at the same time. This has been made possible thanks to a feature called mail forwarding and the ability of Gmail to handle all your other e-mail addresses as different accounts.

How? Again, logging in to my .com.ph + domain’s Cpanel, I can configure my native e-mail account (jhay at jrocas dot com dot ph) to forward all the e-mails it recieves to my Gmail account (jhaykage at gmail dot com). I now log in to my Gmail and proceed to creat a new account or “Send mail as:” profile which means you can use Gmail to send from your other email addresses. The actual process is really easy and can be summarized by the screencap below:

Using my old Gmail account and I can now send an recieve e-mail messages using the address jhay at jrocas dot com dot ph.

Whew! Finally done with the first part. Relax though, this second part is much shorter than the first. Okay then, Google’s ‘Gmail for your domain’ service makes this whole process of mail forwarding and configuring your Gmail accounts a whole lot faster and better.

How? It virtually combines your own domain and Google mail in one single webmail service. You would would have your very own Gmail account but not with the yourusername@gmail.com address, but with your own domain’s address instead, like mine which is jhay at jrocas dor com dot ph

No more configuring your host’s default webmail programs to forward e-mail to your Gmail account and no more setting up your Gmail account to send and recieve messages using your other e-mail addresses. Plus it frees you from the worries of monitoring how much limited webspace your e-mail has taken up because hey! You have all 2 GB plus more, at your e-mailing pleasure babe! (Pardon the language ) Finally, if your domain is a group domain or it belongs to your company or organization, you could Gmail accounts to your members (25 users max) as well so that all of you will have e-mail addresses ending with the domain of your group or company’s website. A powerful way to help promoting your domain and company if I may add.

So again, I hope I have made things clearer for everyone and if you have your own domain, or planning to get your own ( a .com.ph domain would be good if you’re a Filipino) you should opt to apply for this great and free service from Google and have Gmail for your domains.