The Hindu Business Line : Not an April Fool day joke this!

IT all began as a Fool's day joke. And it is still on. Slashdot, the IT enthusiast cyber hangout, carried a story titled "Yahoo and Google to Merge?" on April 1 with a link to http://yagoohoogle.com. As usual, most slashdotters were convinced that it was a joke and a predictable one at that.

Well, while Yahoo and Google are not really merging, the fact remains that the YaGoohoo!gle site is still up.

So, what does it do? It allows you to enter a search term and presents the search results from both Yahoo! and Google.

A tip while using the site: Remember to enter new search terms on the YaGoohoo!gle search bar and not on the individual search bars inside the split frames.

Is it useful? Yes, for Webmasters and new media managers to figure out where their sites or their clients' sites stand in the search engine rankings.

It is can also be used to tell a potential employer or client to use a specific search engine to look for one's name and projects, for those who have a significant Web presence.

Even otherwise, it is a nice toy to play with on Friday evenings and Saturday afternoons. Try searching for your own name or your best friend or your favourite matinee idol.

For those interested in the site more seriously, check out http://www.langreiter.com/exec/yahoo-vs-google.html, where you can run a search term and see a visual representation of how the results match in the two engines.

The YaGoohoo!gle site is now hosted out of the owner's home computer but has a post-dated April 10 on his blog where he says he has received offers for hosting, and some donations as well.

A YaGoohoo!gle search bar plug-in is available for the FireFox browser from http://www.edwilde.com/plugins/yagoohoogle.html.

This is one Fool's day joke that is well worth falling for.

Article E-Mail :: Comment :: Syndication :: Printer Friendly Page