As the search engine wars heat up between Google and Yahoo it's quite interesting to grasp the dissimilarities and comparisons between the two. Yahoo was the lustrous star of internet until a few years back but then Google has overpowered it in terms of search popularity. Yahoo grew at a hasty clip from 1995 to 2001 but then starts descending. Nevertheless, Google is not the only search engine and even now 21- 25% searches have been made through Yahoo.

Have you observed how tough it is to SEO a competitive keyword for both Google and yahoo simultaneously? You would frequently find yourself ranking greatly either in Yahoo or Google. The key problem is, keep in mind that the both engine has got its own algorithm and they change their algorithms on a regular basis. But knowing certain crucial differences does help to get better ranking for your website.

Although Google started giving more preference to keyword density for the most recent few years it is still trailing behind Yahoo. In simple words, Google is still giving priority to quality back links to a large extent, whereas Yahoo likes high keyword density (5% +) and does not give as much preference to back links. So you may ask, what is the trouble then? Why not just enhance your keyword density to keep both search engine robots gratified? The trick is that Google has been known to penalize SEO-ers for keyword stuffing. Even if sometimes the so called “keyword stuffing” can be inferior and not so deliberate. This is fairly interesting actually as several SEO-ers are capable to get away with this and other doesn’t.

So a keyword density below 7% is fine for a higher ranking in both search engines.

Is it possible to get good rank on both yahoo and Google without taking the risk of cheating with your keyword density? Then it’s obvious that you have to concentrate on other SEO aspects by knowing exact difference between Google and Yahoo, Some of the imperative differences are

• Yahoo spiderbot (termed as Slurp) is very active than Google’s slurp as there are more pages in Yahoo! index than in Google.

• Google is a first a search engine and then a directory, and it is just reverse with Yahoo

• Yahoo gives more weight to on-page optimization such as keyword density in title, the headings and URL while Google places foremost importance on off page optimization, for e.g. Backlinks.

• Yahoo gives more importance for the Keywords in filenames and listing under the right category (and category name is part of keywords) whereas for Google this aspect is not of excellent importance.

• Sand Box of Google is quite deeper than yahoo; therefore if you made changes to your site, you need to wait for at least a month till these changes are reflected in search results whereas in Yahoo this time period is shorter.

On the whole, Yahoo is the king of internet traffic where as Google is the king of search referrals.