Google has canned its Google Answers program, which was the first major search operated question & answer service. Simply enough, Googlers would rather use the Google search engine to find answers to their questions, or turn to social question & answer services which are thriving due to their active member base.
Enter Yahoo Answers. In about a year, Yahoo has taken the initial idea put together by Google, and enhanced it into its current social media driven community of niche experts. And with Google dumping its Google Answers offering, Yahoo could not be happier.
Yahoo sent over these stats on its Yahoo Answers success:
* Worldwide numbers for Yahoo! Answers and Knowledge Search (18 countries and 8 languages): Yahoo! Answers has 60 million unique users worldwide and 160 million answers.
* US/English-speaking countries numbers for Yahoo! Answers: Yahoo! Answers has 14.4 million unique users (comScore October) and 60 million answers.
And now, Yahoo has also put out a public calling for those who were using Google Answers and are looking for a new Q&A community to call home.
Tomi Poutanen of Yahoo Social Search posts on the Yahoo Search Blog:
Today we learned that Google Answers is closing. That’s a shame because some great knowledge was created on that service by the Google Answers Researchers.
The Yahoo! Answers community continues to thrive and grow. We believe in the power of community; in people helping people get answers to their questions.
So, this is an open invitation for those researchers to join us. Please consider sharing your knowledge with millions of people on Yahoo! Answers; connect with users with shared interests; get answers to all your questions; and help build the world’s most vibrant and trusted community.
The folks who are researchers and information specialists have been at this longer than us, and there’s a lot we can learn from you. We’ve set up a Yahoo! Group for former Google Answers Researchers and we’d prefer that one of the exGARs help moderate the group.
