Yahoo Displays SERP Title Based On Anchor Text

**incrediblehelp** · #1 (**permalink**) 01-17-2007, 01:25 PM

Have you read this little article from WPN, Steven Bradley?

Yahoo Displays SERP Title Based On Anchor Text

If not do soon ASAP.

How many of you have checked your titles recently in Yahoo? If you haven't recently I would. It is happening to my websites and some of my clients. For instance try this query at Yahoo: KBK Marketing

You will see that the title is "KBK Marketing LLC.". Well that is not my coded title. It is also not my DMOZ or Yahoo Directory title. They are using the anchor text that most websites use to link to you. As Steven Bradley explains this is not a very good idea. What your thoughts?

seorocks · #2 (**permalink**) 01-17-2007, 01:32 PM

hiya,

i was looking at ur website and I have one comment. when i click on the SEO tools link in the left handside menu, I get the list of tools. when i clicked on the links from the list of tools, i dont get a new window for it. i find it irritating, as i would like to keep the site open while navigating through external other sites like google tools.

:))

i love the site..

**incrediblehelp** · #3 (**permalink**) 01-17-2007, 01:40 PM

Thanks for the feedback SEOrocks, but lets keep on topic for this thread.

I will look at fixing that soon.

**incrediblehelp** · #4 (**permalink**) 01-17-2007, 01:54 PM

John from another thread:

http://www.webproworld.com/viewtopic...71322&start=25

Quote:

Originally Posted by Webnauts

Quote:

Originally Posted by incrediblehelp

Yahoo Displays SERP Title Based On Anchor Text

Can you explain me what he means here?

Quote:

Each of these tools comes with an image link back to the SearchBliss site with 'powered by SearchBliss' as the alt attribute text. Search engines will generally fall back on alt text as anchor text for an image link.

Not sure what is being asked here, but images use ALT's. These keywords used in these ALT's is can be used by the SE's the same as anchor text in links.

So in the example above I am sure many are linking to SearchBliss using an image and in the image the ALT is "powered by SearchBliss"

**brian.mark** · #5 (**permalink**) 01-17-2007, 01:57 PM

This was part of Danny's Daily Search Cast today. I guess at pubcon, people were being accused of cloaking because the titles were coming up differently and they weren't understanding where the titles were actually coming from at that point.

It's indeed a poor user experience. Just think what G.W.'s bio page will come up as. ;)

Brian.

littlegiant · #6 (**permalink**) 01-17-2007, 02:05 PM

Some good theories but what I don't understand is why the titles are displayed in lowercase. What's the sense in that? If Yahoo wants to use a different title, okay, but don't make it look like chatspeak. It looks unprofessional.

Webnauts · #7 (**permalink**) 01-17-2007, 02:07 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by brian.mark

It's indeed a poor user experience.

Brian, what do you mean with poor user experience?

**brian.mark** · #8 (**permalink**) 01-17-2007, 02:21 PM

How often do you want to search and see a title that isn't something on the page? Their users aren't going to like this.

Brian.

Webnauts · #9 (**permalink**) 01-17-2007, 10:26 PM

Well after all, I am very glad to see that my preachings about the importance of the use of alt attributes is confirmed.

Thanks everybody. :)

**brian.mark** · #10 (**permalink**) 01-18-2007, 12:44 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Webnauts

Well after all, I am very glad to see that my preachings about the importance of the use of Meta tags is confirmed.

Thanks everybody. :)

Did you look at the article at all? This has nothing to do with meta tags. Preach all you want, that's not what this is about at all, so no confirmation.

This is about anchor text from other sites influencing the listing withing the Yahoo SERPs.

Brian.

Webnauts · #11 (**permalink**) 01-18-2007, 12:53 AM

My mind was elsewhere when I posted.

I re-edited my post above. I met the alt attributes.

LOL

**brian.mark** · #12 (**permalink**) 01-18-2007, 12:55 AM

Still, this is alt attributes on other sites and not your own. This is stuff that's totally out of your control, and that's what people are upset about.

Brian.

Cathy Olds · #13 (**permalink**) 01-19-2007, 08:13 PM

Glad I found this thread!! Came home from work to investigate after discovering my title and description for www.firewaterwind.com (Thunder Restoration) had been totally screwed up! If you search Thunder Restoration I'm coming up #1 but I don't even have a link on Y (from home computer). At work, it showed "new orleans disaster restoration" for the link.
I tried to find an inbound link reflecting this and didn't come up with anything. It also appears that my main page links aren't being cached. What's with that?
Should I be very worried, scared, upset? Anything I can do?

Cathy

**incrediblehelp** · #14 (**permalink**) 01-22-2007, 05:59 PM

I am surprised their are not more comments about this.

activeco · #15 (**permalink**) 01-23-2007, 08:15 PM

I would call it proprietary algorithm.
If their results are poor, users will use another SE.
It's as simple as that. No reason to be mad at Yahoo.

**incrediblehelp** · #16 (**permalink**) 01-23-2007, 08:17 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by activeco

No reason to be mad at Yahoo.

Why not? Its their choice on how the SERPs appear. Who else your going to be mad at?

activeco · #17 (**permalink**) 01-23-2007, 08:32 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by incrediblehelp

Its their choice on how the SERPs appear.

It's their right.

scanmonkey · #18 (**permalink**) 02-10-2007, 01:25 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by activeco

Quote:

Originally Posted by incrediblehelp

Its their choice on how the SERPs appear.

It's their right.

Activeco you like to tow the party line.

I don't like it when search engines ignore my meta tags and do what they want.

activeco · #19 (**permalink**) 02-10-2007, 06:38 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by scanmonkey

I don't like it when search engines ignore my meta tags and do what they want.

That's the way they do it. While this particular issue is solved by Y!, let me remind you that Google operated in almost exactly the same way, with regard to anchor text.
While Google didn't reveal it in the results, Yahoo's glitch provided, for a short time, what terms were tied to your page too. The Googlebombs have been using the same principle.

Hiops · #20 (**permalink**) 02-11-2007, 12:10 AM

Yahoo and Google sure give a big value to anchor text, I'm not sure about MSN.

MarcGrobman · #21 (**permalink**) 02-12-2007, 11:48 PM

I suppose there must have been some logic behind the decision, no? Not saying it is a great idea, but...

Many people leave off title and meta tags. And many people just duplicate the same tag throughout their site. Of the people who intentionally add tags, many do them wrong or do them just for SEO, so they read like a bunch of keywords. So it seems like this technique would be useful at least sometimes. I agree it might not the perfect answer if you, as a thoughtful webmaster, want total control. But I understand where, looking at a long page of results there is the potential for it to offer a better user experience.