Yahoo, the beginning of the end?
May be that is a bit of a stretch as Yahoo still represents a decent market share in overall search traffic. However the recent announcement of the dumping of Yahoo Maps makes us wonder.
To be fair, this is just a single segment of a gigantic company, but one that could have been better capitalized on. One of the contributing authors said it was just 6-7 years ago that Yahoo was the IT leader in the Map world. Yet for some reason they let it go cold, and became obsolete while others invested into that feature.
It’s a similar example we share with clients as they ask if they should scale back, and/or stop SEO after achieving top rankings. In the short term it won’t bite you, but eventually competition who pours resources into the SEO fuel tank will pass you by. Then you scramble to catch up. We adopt the basic principle that has been there for years. It’s cheaper and easier to keep a client (or ranking) then it is to acquire a new one.
As for Yahoo, and what this means for local marketing…not much. It’s not a big surprise they pulled the plug. They were not likely in the top 5 of any discussion regarding Map listings. So the world keeps moving forward, and so does Yahoo.
