Last week marked the 3rd anniversary of Yahoo’s acquisition of the most popular social bookmarking site it the world, Delicious. Has Yahoo! made the most of it? One more indication that they have not came today with the release of the Top 10 search queries that people used on Delicious in 2008 There is a big disconnect between what people submit to the site and what people go there looking for.
If you spend much time looking at Delicous/popular day to day, then you know it’s very geeky. The most popular search queries on the site, though? Words like “news” and “restaurants.” That says to us that the service is probably serving neither group, geeks or mainstream searchers, as well as it could be. Below is the list of this year’s top searches.
The Top Ten Delicious Searches of 2008
What Does it Mean?
We’re not sure what to make of it, but it seems like a problem when the resources most extensively contributed to a system aren’t the ones most sought after. By sheer number of times bookmarked the #1 result in a search for “restaurants” (Yelp), wouldn’t even make it on the front page of a search for Javascript. There are far better vetted resources on the site for Javascript than there are for restaurants, but it’s restaurants people search for.
You Probably Shouldn’t Use Delicious’s Search At All
We use Delicious to look things up a lot here at ReadWriteWeb – but this author never uses the search function there. When I wanted a laptop skin for my computer, I went to http://delicous.com/popular/laptopskin. When people ask me what the best software for recording screencasts is I direct them to http://delicous.com/popular/screencasts. When I’m looking for blogs about, say ceramics http://delicious.com/tag/blog+ceramics.
When you use Delicious search it’s hard to know what you’re getting. A search for “RSS” for example, points you to Bloglines first and foremost. Google Reader isn’t on the list, though it’s been bookmarked more times than Bloglines has. An anti-Google conspiracy? No, search for “spreadsheets” and you’ll find Google Docs.
We don’t know what to make of it. It just seems like one more way that Yahoo! is probably missing some big opportunities with Delicious.
