April 4, 2006

The service puts a little box on your page where Google analyzes the content to show related searches, news and web pages to your visitors. And for helping promote Google in this way, you get .... a little box to put on your page.

Well, it's not like Yahoo's paying you either to put Y!Q links on your pages. Y!Q -- I prefer to write it YQ -- puts a link on your page allowing people to search for related content. You know, sort of like Google's just done, only Yahoo did it a year ago.

In a face-off between the two, I guess I like that Google gives you the option of up to three types of related material: searches, web pages and news rather than just web search. But be aware that YQ has a ton of developer options you can dig into.

Also be aware that despite being out for a year, you're hardly stumbling over YQ links across the web. Maybe Google will have that ever so more cool factor that picks up adoption. I'd personally be more inclined if it helped me direct users to find related content on my own site. YQ does have a feature allowing this. However, it involved going into the API which leaves little old non-programmer me thinking it far too much work to play with.

Meanwhile, Google certainly is easier to install. YQ wants me to put stuff in the header area of my pages, which sucks since I might not want to have YQ on every page. You also have to associate YQ with sections of text, rather than just slap it up on a page and let it figure things out automatically. Too much work for me.

Google Related Links FAQ here; YQ FAQ here. An example of Google Related Links is also shown below: