Yahoo Search Results

[AussieWebmaster]

Seems like everyone is Googling and no one is looking too heavily at Yahoo's endeavors. They are becoming a mess from what I am encountering. They will multiple list a site 3-4 times on the front page... well you need to play with subdomains but yes it can be done.
They are relying heavily on their own directory listings both as what gets listed in the description and the weighting factors for SERPs.
Could this mix up be a way to motivate people to use the Site Match PFI? Similar to the so-called Florida conspiracy for Google's AdWords?
This one may have a little more teeth to it.
Anyway would like a few other opinions and I will start mapping what I have come across.

[Mel]

Hi AW

I do not seem to see this effect much at all.

While I agree that Yahoo is not using clustering in their SERPs, the actual results do not seem to me to be all that much different from Google, which seems to return nearly the same sites in the top twenty results for a given search term, albeit in a different order, which is only to be expected.

As far as the influence of the Yahoo directory is concerned I can only say that sites with which I am familiar and which are in the directory do not seem to have any special benefit as a result of thier directory listing.

As an example a site which I track is listed in the yahoo directory for a particular search term, ranking 20 for that term in Yahoo and ranking 9 in Google for the same term, with the Yahoo SERP title coming from the page title and the description coming from a combination of the pages meta description and a snippet from the page.

In general it seems to me that sites tend to rank better at Yahoo than at Google.

For a competitive search term which I follow these are the results of Yahoo vs. Google:

Yahoo Google
A.......C
B*......J
C*......A
D*......F
E*......-
F.......H
G*......E
H*......-
I*......-
J*......Q
K.......-
L.......-
M.......L
N.......-
O.......-
P*......I
Q******.-
R.......-
S.......E
A.......-
Where that dash in the google column indicates that the site did not rank in the top twenty at Google, and an asterisk represents a Yahoo directory listing.

While eight of the top ten site ranking in Yahoo did have a Yahoo directory listing, it should be noted that 5 of these top ranking site in Yahoo also ranked in the top twenty at Google, indicating IMO the the rankings were not so much due to influence of the directory listing as to being well optimized relevant sites.
In particular site Q, which has six Yahoo directory listings did not rank especially well.

[AussieWebmaster]

I was actually referring to the listing at Yahoo... mine seem to be taken directly as they appearr in Yahoo directory for any keyword terms.

[crashingflwrgrl]

I don't have a listing in the Yahoo directory and I'm doing just fine in their SERP's, #1 for alot of keywords.

Yahoo is using some content from my meta tags and some content from my site as a description.

[Mel]

Originally Posted by AussieWebmaster

I was actually referring to the listing at Yahoo... mine seem to be taken directly as they appearr in Yahoo directory for any keyword terms.

Strange. What I am seeing on sites listed in the Yahoo directory is that on searches for the URL the directory titles and descriptions seem to be used but on keyword searches the page title, meta description and page snippets are displayed.

Though in another thread there is evidence that listings in Yahoo country directories seem to use directory titles and descriptions for keyword searches anytime it is the home page that ranks, and page title etc for interior pages.

Go figure.