After over 15 years on the internet, the website Yahoo! Answers is shutting down next month.
Users will no longer be able to post new content on Yahoo! Answers starting on April 20th. Then on May 4th, the site will officially go offline.
“While Yahoo Answers was once a key part of Yahoo’s products and services, it has become less popular over the years as the needs of our members have changed,” Yahoo said in an email that was sent out to users on Monday.
Indeed, other question-and-answer platforms such as Reddit and Quora are drawing many more users than Yahoo! Answers, which originally launched back in 2005. Nevertheless, the old site still attracts a sizable amount of traffic. According to SimilarWeb, Yahoo! Answers ranks as the 840th most visited site in the US, and pulled in an estimated 60 million visits back in February. (In contrast, Quora pulled in 504 million.)
Verizon, which owns Yahoo, didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment. But last year, the company also decided to shut down another property, Yahoo Groups, citing the 20-year-old discussion board’s low use. At the same time, Verizon signaled it was pivoting away from user-generated posts to instead focus on “premium, trustworthy content.”
When visiting Yahoo! Answers, we couldn’t help but notice some of the content was covering opinions on heated political topics, including the death of George Floyd. Users on the site are now speculating Verizon decided to pull the plug due to a lack of content moderation, and rampant trolling.
Yahoo has created an FAQ with more information on how users can download a copy in JSON format of any questions or answers they posted to the site. However, you won’t be able to download other users’ content, questions, or answers. The option to download your content will remain available until June 30th. After the deadline, Yahoo will proceed to delete all data on the site.
