Not impressed by Yahoo

[nikmcg]

I have made this post as a warning to other website owners to beware the Yahoo directory.
I submitted a site to them last May and paid the $299 review fee. Yahoo say the site will be reviewed within days and an e-mail will explain reasons for non inclusion if site is not accepted.

Approx a month after receiving nothing I did find our website had been included in the directory. Unfortunately in the incorrect category. Since then I have repeatedly requested the site be added to the correct category. The e-mail response was that it had been incorrectly categorised and that after a few days the site would be included in the correct category. Well here we are in Jan 2008 and it's still not!

Next moan. The same website used to appear quite well for our keyphrases in Yahoo search but following a cosmetic only revamp only the index page is now indexed. I decided that probably to verify the site with Yahoo may rectify this, it didn't. Neither did submitting an XML feed sitemap. Again I have politely e-mailed Yahoo about this. I even asked them directly if the site was being penalised. One lady did reply to me saying it wasn't penalised and the problem was with Yahoo. Months later still only the index page is included! The same site ranks well in both MSN and Google with all pages indexed.

Next moan. The new revamped Yahoo search marketing interface is yet still slower to use than it's previous Overture and not as straightforward, worse still some of the keyphrases I've bid on don't come up when using Yahoo Search. Often in the sponsored results all you see is "Advertise your site here". Well I'm trying to do just that.

So my experience of Yahoo is that they clearly have no interest in website owners. Anyone else had similar experiences?

[qh4dotcom]

Try complaining to the Better Business Bureau...if you paid the $299 with a credit card you can also initiate a dispute with your credit card company.

[deilenberger]

Not surprised.

Yahoo is definately a second-place runner compared to Google. And Microsoft is way behind also. I think the problem is - Yahoo doesn't know what it wants to be.. neither does MS.. Google knows exactly what it wants to be (ruler of the world - but not evil..)

As a hint - I've done better with PPC placement companies that feed directly into the Yahoo database. A bit of searching might turn them up for you.. of course that doesn't get your $299 back, and it's likely to cost more than $299 in the long run, but it does work, especially if you have a dynamic website with changing inventory.

[BossWebmaster]

Yahoo sucks in everything they do. I've never had a good experience with them, except playing spades and pool for free on their online games. When I set up a pay per click campaign they regularly double charged, wouldn't reimburse me, they just applied a "credit" to my account. I got crummy ROI from the ads.

[EliteAF]

You paid them!!!!!!

hahahahahahahahahaha

What was it that PT Barnum is credited with saying?????

[subsystems]

A customer of mine has an online business. They moved their business from one city to a nearby city 10 years ago. Yahooligans were sent no less than 20 requests to update the listing. Back in 1998 the listing disappeared for 3 months. At that time they were the #1 business in their industry showing up in the top 3 of all major SERPS. They lost 40% of their sales during that time. They were sent additional requests to be re-listed and correctly. When they finally showed back up it was the old listing. The description is also very out dated to the point that one of the products mentioned was discontinued years ago.
Their business model has now changed and the listing is still from pre 1998. We expect them to retire before the listing is corrected.
Good Luck getting any response from them.

[craigmn3]

More Stories....


Back in the days when you only had to pay once for life, I submitted one of my sites to Yahoo Directory. That was many moons ago. When it was entered into the category there was a misspelling of one word and it looked bad....really bad not gud. Anyway it took me two years to get that corrected and when someone did fix it, they rewrote the entire description so well, I had to but a noydir tag on my site. Like everyone one else, they want the money....and little else.

[kjohnson5576]

I long for the days when Google provided the Yahoo results. I was on the first page for many, many keywords. After the split, my primary site only has my index page listed. Funny thing, I've got a strictly adsense site and all pages are indexed. Go Figure. I gave up on Yahoo Search Marketing 2 years ago. I've ranted about that in enough WPW posts already.

Yahoo? Definately a subpar search engine and advertising venue.

[freelancedesigners.com]

"Dogcrap > Yahoo"


A little OT but: while I am spouting such eloquent prose, here is another great quote you can attribute to me, I just looked over alexa to see yahoo in the #1 spot, then I see some other crap hi5.com? and another one skyrock.com... pretty soon there will be a complete social networking site for every single human being with an internet account, its worse than reality TV - anyway that inspired this next excellent quote:

"Social networking sites are like garbage dumps filled with human waste."

[mjtaylor]

I appreciate that you aren't happy with the category your site landed in, but is it an irrelevant category or just not the one you prefer?

[netroact]

Originally Posted by freelancedesigners.com

"Social networking sites are like garbage dumps filled with human waste."

That's beautiful man!

My experience with Yahoo has taught me that they are a complete different animal than Google. And, I frankly don't believe it would be very easy to get listed well in both.

The Yahoo algorithm seems to accomodate websites that flow with one or more themes throughout the whole site. Google seems to prefer a theme for each section or page.

One could argue that the Google protocol is more complex, so it's better. But in reality it is just more difficult. That doesn't necessarily mean it is better.

Yahoo is very simplistic in their approach, and no matter how many updates and changes they make, everything remains very basic. I change very little to pages that do well in Yahoo. I make very small incremental changes over time. This has worked well for me over the last few years, or maybe I've just been lucky. Who knows for sure?

[deepsand]

Originally Posted by qh4dotcom

Try complaining to the Better Business Bureau...if you paid the $299 with a credit card you can also initiate a dispute with your credit card company.

It's doubtful that such dispute would be successful, as Yahoo makes it clear that 1) there is no guarantee of inclusion, 2) that they reserve the right to place the listing, if approved, in the category of their choice, and 3) that the subsmission fee is non-refundable regardless of the result of their review.

[Bill Treloar]

I've never considered the Yahoo Directory worth the $299 - not even when it was a one-time fee. As an annual fee, it's absurdly over-priced.

Do you know anyone who looks for web sites in the Yahoo Directory? If not, then the only value is as an inbound link to your web site. A free DMOZ link is better. Many other free directory links are just as good.

[arius]

I would try to call the phone number (hard to dig and find it but there is one somewhere) for customer service on that Yahoo Directory, and try to go up the ranks of the customer service.

I had an experience for US Navy SEALs Store - Shop Navy SEALs Gear & Merchandise & Luminox Watch & Gifts... site at one time. It was late, no review was done and done put in the wrong place. I called, took me half an hour almost, but got it fixed. In fact I was suprised to see a real person (and knowledgeable I might add) from India helped me through this and ended up talking up in the ranks to get the problem fixed.

I was impressed having experience before with trying to deal with Search Engine customer service before.

[arius]

Originally Posted by Bill Treloar

I've never considered the Yahoo Directory worth the $299 - not even when it was a one-time fee. As an annual fee, it's absurdly over-priced.

I should also add that I think this is over generalizing. For some of the sites I think it definetly worths the money, for some sites and directories it does not. Depends on what you want to do. If you are going to be 118th in a directory with 150 others in a competitive market, probably not a good idea but for a niche or a small directory for a subdomain subcategory that you are going after a specific term that has commercial value, I will go for it.

[tmaster]

Originally Posted by nikmcg

I have made this post as a warning to other website owners to beware the Yahoo directory.
I submitted a site to them last May and paid the $299 review fee. Yahoo say the site will be reviewed within days and an e-mail will explain reasons for non inclusion if site is not accepted.

Approx a month after receiving nothing I did find our website had been included in the directory. Unfortunately in the incorrect category. Since then I have repeatedly requested the site be added to the correct category. The e-mail response was that it had been incorrectly categorised and that after a few days the site would be included in the correct category. Well here we are in Jan 2008 and it's still not!
?

Having given up on them in the 90s I just ignore them. If you get listed fine but don't worry about it everyone uses google anyway. You should refer all your frinds to google.

[deepsand]

Originally Posted by Bill Treloar

I've never considered the Yahoo Directory worth the $299 - not even when it was a one-time fee. As an annual fee, it's absurdly over-priced.

Do you know anyone who looks for web sites in the Yahoo Directory? If not, then the only value is as an inbound link to your web site. A free DMOZ link is better. Many other free directory links are just as good.

1) A listing in Yahoo Directory is considered to be an authoritative link by Google.

2) Given that DMOZ is run by volunteers, and that many editors have done little to no work on submissions since Methuselah was in diapers, I'd not hold my breath waitng on a DMOZ listing.

Bear in mind that one need not pay to be listed in the Yahoo directory; those that qualify will most likely eventually get indexed and placed by Yahoo for free.

[deepsand]

Originally Posted by tmaster

... it everyone uses google anyway.

Really? You must live in an alternate universe, only occasionally visiting this one.

Originally Posted by tmaster

You should refer all your frinds to google.

While Google may in fact Do No Evil in your universe, they behave quite differently here.

[deepsand]

Originally Posted by arius

I would try to call the phone number (hard to dig and find it but there is one somewhere) for customer service on that Yahoo Directory, and try to go up the ranks of the customer service.

One might try 866-924-6676, the number for Yahoo Search Marketing. They should be able to either transfer you to the proper department or provide the correct number.