Optimizing For The New Yahoo

Garrett · #1 (**permalink**) 02-18-2004, 10:59 AM

Well, it's official. Yahoo's now deploying their new algorithmic search technology and you'll see it rolling out across their network in the next couple of weeks. (Good timing for the Search Engine Strategies Conference, eh? They're sure to be the big buzz now.)

The only question now is how do you optimize your site for the new Yahoo?

First we've got to get to know their new spider, YahooSlurp, and how he looks at web pages.

Jim Hedger of StepForth investigated and reported some basic facts that will be important to how you optimize your pages:

Quote:

* YahooSlurp will work a lot like GoogleBot in that it will follow every HREF link on found a website. YahooSlurp will NOT follow SRC links such as images or FRAMES. When optimizing a site that uses FRAMES, correct use of the <noframes> tag will be necessary.

* YahooSlurp can follow dynamic links but Yahoo is advising webmasters to post static pages with HREF (text) links directed to specific sections featuring dynamic content. This tells us that the use of a sitemap will continue to be an SEO Best Practice technique.

* Yahoo will respect common ROBOTS.TXT statements. For more information on ROBOTS.TXT files, please visit: http://www.robotstxt.org/wc/norobots.html

* Paying to get into Inktomi database should attract more attention from YahooSlurp. I am pretty sure if YahooSlurp will find your site if you don't pay however paying will buy you much greater frequency of visits from the Slurp spider.

* Inktomi is very old-school when it comes to Keyword densities, keyword arrangement and simple-site structure. Optimizing for Inktomi is a lot like optimizing for AltaVista was a few years back (without the leader-pages and gateways that were once so popular).

Jim left us with an excellent question: "what is the relationship between Directory and Algorithmic listings?"

I'll be sure to follow up on that one, especially in light of the Yahoo Directory Debate, where webmasters and SEOs argued about the value of paying to be in the directory. Thanks Jim!

Visit YahooSearch and tell us what you think of the results!

Garrett · #2 (**permalink**) 02-18-2004, 12:17 PM

In an article from eWeek that he published in his blog, Andy Beal said that 15 people from his company spent the majority of Tuesday analyzing Yahoo's results.

Beal noted that the results on Yahoo's search were slightly different from other sites that use Inktomi - do some searches yourself to determine Yahoo's distinct algorithmic flavor.

Chris Sherman, of SearchEngineWatch said, "for popular or common queries, there seemed to be very little difference between the two engines in top few results. But once you get past those, the results tend to diverge dramatically."

Beal thought that, "it looks like Yahoo is trying to mimic Google in many ways."

However, Sherman said, "while Yahoo and Google are likely using similar algorithms, one reason for the differences in what's displayed is that Yahoo's email and search teams are now working together to leverage what they've learned about spam.

"Since Yahoo mail processes billions of email messages, this knowledge is likely quite helpful in providing Yahoo with a much deeper understanding of the characteristics of spam -- and helping keep the nasty stuff out of the web page index."

What do you think of the new Yahoo algorithm?

SearchEngineWatch article on the new Yahoo.
eWeek article on the new Yahoo.
The Yahoo press release.

magpie · #3 (**permalink**) 02-19-2004, 11:56 AM

I received a notice from Market Leap last nite on the Yahoo optimization recommendations. see below:
Also, our site http://www.planetmagpie.com has been performing well with Google...and we have been starting to optimize for Yahoo..will these new guidelines create problems for us in Google..or can we use the same rules in optimizing for both engines?
Robert Douglas
http://www.planetmagpie.com

HTML Titles:

Contains less than 80 characters.
Provides call to action.
Uses important keywords and phrases unique to the individual page.
Uniquely describes what the page is about.
Consistent with page Description and web page Body.
Does not unnecessarily repeat your Company Name at the beginning of each Title Tag. The first few keywords of your Title tag are given the
heaviest weight by the search engine, so it is important not to dedicate these first few words to your Company Name if your name is not what customers are searching for the most.
Your Company Name is moved to the end of your Title tag.

META Keywords:

Contains less than 15 keyword phrases each separated by commas.
Uses important keywords and phrases unique to the individual page.
Combines important online action words with your product/service keywords such as, "buy", "shop", "find" and/or "purchase". Use
WordTracker.com to research what action words are used by searchers of your keywords.
Minimal repetition of individual words.
Consistent with Title tag and web page Body content.

META Descriptions:

Contains less than 225 characters.
Provides call to action.
Combines important online action words with your product/service keywords.
Uses important keywords and phrases.
Uniquely describes the page.
Consistent with Title and web page Body content.

mctwofist · #4 (**permalink**) 02-19-2004, 12:38 PM

I was wondering the same thing. If these 'suggestions' would actually end up being detrimental in the long run with Google. Anyone seen anything indicating conflicts with these changes??

As we are all aware, Google is still the King of the shit and as far as Yahoo is concerned its an issue thats being completely blown out of proportion here. Check your stats on who's using what. Don't matter if you rank number 1 or number 45 in Yahoo if 90% of the people are Googling.

And then what. What happens next month when they change again? YOu may control your SEO destiny now but in the long run big brother owns your ass.

cheers.

teleconnect · #5 (**permalink**) 02-19-2004, 06:24 PM

I'm #2 page 1 on both the following search terms -
consumer mailing lists
and
business mailing lists

if this is whats deploying I love the results...I have been in Yahoo directory since October 1996 so I think this may have some impact on my listing....?...any feedback on this is appreciated.

Marty Screeton
http://www.teleconect.com

WebMetro · #6 (**permalink**) 02-19-2004, 07:56 PM

Quote:

Don't matter if you rank number 1 or number 45 in Yahoo if 90% of the people are Googling.

Google provides about 30% of all searches online according to comScore (Link). It's also quite obvious to tell, after spending a couple million in Overture, that Yahoo is a major contributor to product based sales and conversions. If you sell a product, such as a scooter, and ranked well in Google, you will not only see a drop of 30% in overall traffic, but you will also see a much more dramatic drop in sales because chances are you had more sales coming from Yahoo than Google.

Google is a research-based engine, thus, Google has never been great for selling products on Adwords. If you track sales closely, you'll notice that AOL and other Google partners generate most product sales. This also holds true for the natural search results.

As for optimizing for Yahoo!, WebMetro has seen YahooSlurp results for about two weeks and have been analyzing the different results using our clients as excellent case studies.

YahooSlurp / Yinktomi falls under the category, "less is more". Stick with the basics and use simple optimization tactics, ie - H1 tags, target titles, keyword anchor text hyperlinks, incoming links with keyword anchor text, ect. The one thing Yahoo seems to be better at is indexing dynamic urls. For an example of this, type in "membrane switches" in Yahoo and look at the first few results.

htmlgirl · #7 (**permalink**) 02-19-2004, 08:08 PM

In google I have experienced a varied position in ratings from being in the top 10 to nowhere...but I have just looked a the yahoo search as suggested and I am number 1 and 2 in the lone parenting search... I have used text links to each page of my site and I have a links page these have both been picked up by the spider...how is it that google hasnt shown my site for at least 2 months?...I have done at least a monthly submittion but to no avail...

htmlgirl

www.loneparenting.com

Rninja · #8 (**permalink**) 02-19-2004, 08:50 PM

I am still trying to understand why the results are differing so much. I am new to the art of getting on the search engines in no less than the top 30, so it interesting when all of these symantics are changed and affect so many variables...

Deep13 · #9 (**permalink**) 02-19-2004, 11:16 PM

well about the results i will say it ALLOWS spam...infact it cannot detect hidden keywords at all...

for example do search for keyword Send Gifts to India in yahoo and check first result which redirects to GiftAGift.com

now its time to check footer of the page...

found many many hidden keywords...

you can check their cached page

waiting for comments.. :)
Deep

jmatthan · #10 (**permalink**) 02-20-2004, 01:12 AM

I have about 50 different topics (and over 5000 pages) and the one search engine I never really systematically submitted my sites to was Yahoo. Hence my results for the key terms used by my visitors used to be pathetic. See:

http://www.findians.com/focus.html

With my test of the new search engine most of my sites appear as an absolute No. 1 and all my key sites are in the top 20, and usually well within the top 10.

However, I will have to test the aspect of the speed at which my updates appear to come in the top 20 sites.

I have maintained my top positions in Google with no problems with most of my subjects, but the new Yahoo even betters my positions in the ones where I had lost ground in Google.

Secret of success - never do anything to get a placement on Search Engines and never pay for listing. Keep to the subject of your web pages!!!

KateCB · #11 (**permalink**) 02-20-2004, 03:23 AM

I have been free submitting to Yahoo, Google and many other search engines for 4 years, and have rated between #5 to nowhere in the past - I am pleased to say that I seem to have got it right at the moment, as I now show as #1 on BOTH search engines for my main keywords Martial art supplies UK....long may it reign (and long may they decide not to chage the algorithm for a few years!)

I'm not really keyword, SE savvy - I do what I think is right, and finally *my* logic seems to have paid off!

Mel · #12 (**permalink**) 02-20-2004, 07:17 AM

Pre-Florida Google optimization techniques seem to be working well for me in both the new Google update and in Yahoo.

I like the results I am seeing in Yahoo better than those in Google though as Yahoo seems to have cleaned out the spam better than Google

Mac 5 · #13 (**permalink**) 02-20-2004, 08:10 AM

What about Yahoo (or Google) indexing sites with database driven dynamic pages with shopping carts? In the past, indexing the pages with dynamic content has been hard for engines to process, but I think they are working on it.

I am in the process of deciding on setting up a dynamic site with OSCommerce or choosing another product that "claims" to be search engine friendly. Will the engines adapt to how many of the dynamic sites are already built, or will people have to change to a more "friendly" program?

Mel · #14 (**permalink**) 02-20-2004, 08:17 AM

IMO Google is pretty good about indexing dynamic pages these days, as least as long as you take a bit of care in ensuring friendly URLs, but Yahoo is saying that while they can spider many types of Dynamic URLs the spiders they are using for "url discovery" are not so good at it and recommend that you use an html sitemap to make sure all your pages get spidered.

fctoma · #15 (**permalink**) 02-20-2004, 05:13 PM

I'm in agreement with WebMetro... Google may supply tons more visitors, but for conversions and buying, Overture has been the king. Now that there are no Google results to be in Yahoo... Google will have to start watching their back.

This should prove to be an entertaining year, I'm somewhat excited.... can't you tell :)... joy.

Google will finally have a few powerhouses to deal with. Not like before, when Google was fresh and new to the seen, stealing everyone's loyalty. Now, hopefully MSN and Yahoo can set their crosshairs on the right targets to make this a three-way battle in 2004.

Have a great weekend all of you!

htmlgirl · #16 (**permalink**) 02-20-2004, 08:30 PM

I have not been in the web design industry for long and am relatively new to search engines and rankings but I agree that MSN and yahoo are going to seem a bit more of a positive result for my site at least, so hopefully people will use yahoo more this year...google will still be more popular however and it will take a few more months to get the change that is needed for yahoo and the others to have an impact I think...

Hooray to that I say!!...

htmlgirl

chris_g · #17 (**permalink**) 02-20-2004, 10:11 PM

We are glad to see the new players in the market as well. Although we are still doing very well in both the old and new Google.

The one thing we have been discussing in our in-house strategic meetings is how the new players are diverging. When we started in 1997 we used to build pages (or websites) specific to each of the major players to attian the results we wanted. We appear to be heading back in that direction. Is this a step forwards or a step backwards for SEO?

Althought this can be done fairly easily and we can attain better overall results it does cause some problems with duplicate content we have not had to deal with for several years.

Mukul · #18 (**permalink**) 02-21-2004, 01:28 AM

Hello,

My yahoo listing looks more like pre-austin listings from google i.e. I am ranking #1 - #10 for all my keywords.

But still, my website gets no trafiic from yahoo. I am wondering that if yahoo controls 40% share then why is is happenning. I should be seeing some hits.

Mukul

Mel · #19 (**permalink**) 02-21-2004, 02:41 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by chris_g

We are glad to see the new players in the market as well. Although we are still doing very well in both the old and new Google.

The one thing we have been discussing in our in-house strategic meetings is how the new players are diverging. When we started in 1997 we used to build pages (or websites) specific to each of the major players to attian the results we wanted. We appear to be heading back in that direction. Is this a step forwards or a step backwards for SEO?

Althought this can be done fairly easily and we can attain better overall results it does cause some problems with duplicate content we have not had to deal with for several years.

I don't really see this a much of a problem Chris - on my site the same pages rank top 3 on Google, yahoo, MSN, ATW and Altavista to name a few.

T2DMan · #20 (**permalink**) 02-21-2004, 05:55 AM

I am in fact getting better SERP's on Yahoo, but only where their bot has visited all my pages for that particular phrase.

I like the longer snippets Yahoo uses. My "formula" of having a paragraph of descriptive sales text including the phrase twice works well with Yahoo. I have the same issue with MSN and other SE's.

Generally 1st where MSN has found the correct page. If you do all the SEO techniques well, when a SE picks on one aspect to emphasise, and you have done all aspects well, you can only but win.

The semantics and longer urls that Google now searches means there is that much more competition for phrases. And the fact that Google is still playing tricks on webmasters... I would not like to go down the track of having pages for specific bots and disallowing other SE bots.

It will take a while for the Yahoo traffic to start coming. Hardly have any here in New Zealand.

Just done a tally up excluding bots - todays % same as for month within 2 percentage points - month over 6000 so far. No promotions to skew anything.
Direct 27%
Google 47%
Yahoo 7%
MSN 5%
other 14% (affiliates, other SE's)
---
100%
Only 0.4% for Alta Vista, and I am top for all my phrases on it!
Interesting.

I, Brian · #21 (**permalink**) 02-21-2004, 08:22 AM

Ahem, :)

How to Optimise for Yahoo!

IS that of any use to anybody? :D

Mel · #22 (**permalink**) 02-21-2004, 10:35 AM

Nice writeup Brian.