Yahoo Descriptions

[thepoacher]

Hi all,

A very brief question here - Yahoo is returning some odd results for a site that was recently relaunched (Corsica Holidays, Villas, Hotels and Apartments with Corsican Places). The listings are excellent but the page title is incorrect and the description seems to be utterly arbitrary and I can't even see where it's coming from. Does Yahoo make up its own or what? Am I missing something?

corsica - Yahoo! Search Results

Any advice is greatly appreciated

Many thanks

Matt

[incrediblehelp]

Looks like Slurp is having some issues finding duplicate content. For instance this URL is indexed http ://www. corsica.co.uk/ ?icid=G050-51603728-148A. Why not 301 reidrct this URL to you home page: http:// www. corsica.co.uk/

[deepsand]

Precisely how are the Titles incorrect?

As for the Descriptions, are you saying that the text displayed appears nowhere on this site?

[Jean-Luc]

The title and description are coming from this page of the Yahoo! Directory.

To tell Yahoo not to use the title and description from the directory, use :

<META NAME="Slurp" CONTENT="NOYDIR">

Jean-Luc

[PixelPusher]

As Jean-Luc mentioned it is possible that Yahoo fetches these Infos from their own Directory, similar to Google taking the Description from DMOZ. you can control this with the mentioned meta-tag and the value "NOYDIR" (Yahoo Directory) and "NOODP" (DMOZ).

[thepoacher]

Thanks for the responses on this.

It does seem odd that Yahoo would suddenly revert to their directory description rather than our own - I assume this has something to do with the re-indexing and will hopefully sort itself out. I have implemented the NOYDIR code to try and counteract this. I have seen to it that we redirect all 'versions' of the homepage to a single default setting to counteract the problem of duplicate content.

Thanks again

Matt

[PixelPusher]

Well, did you change the Description? Maybe the Yahoo! Algo thinks that the Description of your Yahoo! Directory entry is a better match for the search request.

[deepsand]

Originally Posted by thepoacher

It does seem odd that Yahoo would suddenly revert to their directory description rather than our own

Bear in mind that, for the most part, the meta-data specifications were designed to accommodate the needs of the publisher to be able to control the rendering of a page, not for the convenience of SEs.

Therefore, there is no guarantee, and should be no expectation, that any SE will use your Description; each will independently determine what its believes to be best for its users.