Hi Folks

[Susan]

Its really a nice forum, i am enjoying my stay here while reading the very informative posts!
AND YES I HAVE A QUESTION TOO!

what does this "most popular" in the category page of yahoo results mean. My concern is that, how can my site get into the most popular listing in Yahoo?

[ihelpyou]

Welcome to the forums Susan! :hi:

Most popular in yahoo are picked by the editors. No site has any control over this. The editors make the decisions with no other input. This is what I do believe anyway.

[JuniorHarris]

Welcome Susan!~ :hi:

[Hope]

Please forgive my ignorance, but what are you all talking about?

Please understand that I do not use Yahoo EVER. It offers the worst search results I have ever seen. I went and did a couple of searches, finding very little info that was worth while to me, but did not find "most popular" sites.

[MsSearch]

I noticed this today...Yahoo has a new layout for their search results...

[Blue]

:hi:

[Farhan]

Welcome to the forums Susan:hi:

I guess you are talking about the listings which appear when you click a certain category of results. The most popular listings are picked by the editors as Doug said. What i wanted to add is that Yahoo has changed is search layout. The business category listings( the sites submitted through the Biz Express) are now shown under the tag of COMMERCIAL DIRECTORY. secondly, while searching for some info yesterday, i found some very irrelevant sites which were never there before. I dont know what these people are doing:confused:

[ihelpyou]

In my mind a Yahoo listing seems to be becoming less and less important. It's true some sites can get lots of hits but from the overall scheme of things, the listing is not as important as it use to be. I am now at the point where I do not recommend trying to get a listing anymore. I do tell clients to definitely get into DMOZ and Looksmart. Yahoo is waaay overrated at this time. Besides, the relevancy of results has went waaaaay down. I never search there for anything.

[Advisor]

Oh wow! The Yahoo changes look to be for the better! They're not cluttered with all their category listings now, but go right to the sites! I think this is much better and should help clients get more hits from them. I just now took a quick look at things, but it appears that this is what they've done. The results are way cleaner without all those stupid category listings. We'll have to see how it helps (or doesn't help) the traffic. My guess is it will be good news for most!

Jill

[newriver]

Wow...The new yahoo appearance is kind of cool!

I think this will mean much more traffic for the people already on top for certain searches as less people will be clicking on the category results. It should also mean the people on top should stay on top longer...(you get to the top by CT's from the category results and search results)...unfortunately for people not currently on top it may mean it will be more difficult to get there.

Now for the debate :thebomb:

How can you say the new results are horrible and irrelevant...they are the same results in a different layout.

Doug, Doug, Doug, not recommending clients get a Yahoo listing...shame, shame, shame...It is still the #1 or #2 source of traffic from SE's depending on who you listen to. A Yahoo listing alone bumps a Google listing bigtime as an excellent source link.

Let the debate begin!! :thebomb:

[ihelpyou]

Like I said, I never go to Yahoo to search so I have not seen the new layout.

I think about half of all sites with a listing may get traffic from them. Believe me, the other half does not. I think it has to do with the market or something but I DO know only half of all sites get traffic. Maybe not even that.

[Farhan]

Okay now let me add some words.
Doug, I agree with NewRiver, Yahoo is still a great source for traffic at least to many of us. So one cannot just skip away it.

The new layout:
I had been analyzing yahoo results very carefully for the last 10 days. See what went along in these 10 days.

Once upon a time…..
When you typed a keyword in the search box, some very ‘cluttered results (as what Jill said) appeared with all that categories and sites simultaneously. I always wondered why some categories appeared on top though some more relevant sites were in the other category which appeared below. Well, then one day, I clicked the ‘ ranked by relevance ‘ and what I saw was….
The most optimized site appeared first regardless of the category and so on. And just because of this site the whole category came up with some irrelevant sites too.
THIS WAS NOT GOOD AT ALL !

3 days later.....

I Clicked the ranked by relevance icon and it was all gone. It was simply changed. It just displayed what was there in categories regardless of any relevance

THIS WAS EVEN WORST. :confused:


5 days later..... :eek:
New categories were added on some search results, and business economy sites were given lesser importance than the non-business sites.

And Finally.. :rolleyes:
It was all changed, it looked good, BUT, but the same results with increased irrelevancy. The non-business sites, regardless of their irrelevancy were added to the results.

My point

At this time when the businesses are suffering, take the airline industry for example, or insurance. Has Yahoo done good to them. Not at all, giving the business sites lesser importance is not fair in my opinion. They pay you $300 dollars, and okay don’t give them any special consideration if they are not relevant, but if they are, then what have the done wrong by submitting through the BIZ EXPRESS. I hope yahoo takes this seriously.

[Mel]

Hi all:

I am not about to get dragged into the "Yahoo is good or not" argument, BUT if many experienced and knowledgeable individuals begin to say that the results are not very relevant and the traffic not interesting, many individuals are going to try to find better search and traffic alternatives, which certainly exist.

Am I going to spend $300 to test the theory that Yahoo is still important commercially and with regard to relevancy?

Not unless business gets a lot worse and I have to take more extreme measures

[ihelpyou]

I simply do not give clients high hopes of receiving tons of hits from Yahoo if they get in. Sure, I will tell them get in if they can but do NOT expect lots of hits. It is a pure 50/50 chance that a site will get traffic from them.

[Advisor]

On another Yahoo note (and what seems to be even more prominent with their new results), I think it's unfair that they place so much emphasis on keywords in the title since you "have to" put the company name in the title. This encourages all those sneaky SEO creeps to buy keyword rich domains and name their companies stupid things like "Search Engine Optimization R US" thus giving them the number one listing in Yahoo for search engine optimization. Then of course, once they're in, they simply change the site back to their normal, "Joe's Sneaky Shop" and they're all set. (Oops:eek:...did I just tell people how to spam Yahoo???)

If they would simply not place any emphasis on the Title at all (or in the URL) but more on the descriptions (or like what LookSmart does with some editorially added keyphrases), the quality of their results would be much better. And the spammers would have to think of a new trick!

Jill

[ihelpyou]

LOL. That is my BIGGEST beef with Yahoo. They allow ALL spammers on the planet to SPAM them at ANY time and VERY easily. The H**l with the TRUE professional business name that legitimate sites have, they want the SPAMMERS business name only to get all the hits.

By far, my biggest beef and Yahoo's biggest downfall, and one that I feel will lead to their demise if they do not correct it.

My rant for the day. That point truely upsets me to NO end and has for a long time.

[Advisor]

I guess that's where I first heard it before...was from YOU!

But it's sooooo true. And sooooo wrong of them to do it that way. Doug, have you ever emailed anyone there about it? They claim to want the best directory, but they really do make that hard by using this practice!

Jill

[ihelpyou]

Yes you did. Another rant is in another thread in this forum about the same thing.

I wake up daily thinking about all the spammers in Yahoo getting all the hits. :)

[Advisor]

I wake up daily thinking about all the spammers in Yahoo getting all the hits. Oh, man, Doug...you really gotta get a life!

Jill