Yahoo's Old Algo, Deliberate?

[katiebear]

It was easy to spam Yahoo! a few weeks ago by submitting a keyword rich url. This could have been an easy way for Yahoo to increase revenue in a falling advertising market.

I think Yahoo purposely changed the algo so SEOs realize that the index is easy to spam. SEO's go on a buying spree of keyword rich URL. They then spend the $299 to submit the URL to Yahoo driving increased revenue to Yahoo. These guys who work for Yahoo! are not idiots and they are constantly looking for ways to increase revenues.
As I break it down, directory submissions are a cash cow for Yahoo! It does not take much resource to review and insert a link into the directory.

What do you think?

[SEO_Speedster]

I couldn't agree more!

Yesterday, webwhiz and I both posted regarding my own site's listings in yahoo. Our company's old header graphic simply said Search Engine Optimization and Yahoo! gave the listing that exact branding - not the company's name or anything like that.

Since then, although not intended, we understand there are some benefits there to that trend. So, in desperate cases for those touchy clients looking for perfect Yahoo! listings - it's an option (though not one I agree with...).

Regardless, it works. And I think that many SEO's know this to be the case... And after all, I think the majority of any money that Yahoo! has to spend on adding a listing - is in billing the credit card and processing an email. A whopping $5.00 worth of work I bet for them. Not too shabby in terms of profit gain, huh?

[Advisor]

Hmmmm...and this would also help explain why sometimes the "spammy" results are back! Perhaps they put those ones in for a few days so that the SEOs will still figure it's worth the money to add their keyword rich "fake" companies, but then for most of the time they use the "better" listings.

This would actually explain a lot!

Jill