Weather Report: Yahoo! Search Index Update

There appears to have been a major algo shift in focus and prioritization of Back Links and their hyperlinked text – differently than the previous update

It appears to have allowed many WikiPedia sites to get on page one for keywords related to their Topic/ Page Name

and just like Google, there is a heavy AMAZON presence on the SERPs based on the Title of their listings

Another somewhat older Algorithm is still coming up on Yahoo that appears to have allowed many Technorati sites to get a page one listing for related Topics / page name

It appears that Yahoo’s interpretation of TrustRank is starting to differentiate between the SERPs winners and loosers.

Overall, there does NOT appear to be a MAJOR difference in overall quality among this and the last update… it is just a shifting of the deck.

Agree with the above…but it is nice to see that more relevant (& current) sites are being ranked above some of the other (older) sites from the last update.

I think you all are heading in the right direction…I am very interested to see what TrustRank offers and how it will effect these (your) serps.

Seems to be a big algo change to me – well on some versions of Yahoo – but not all.

There are definetly two algos about – Yahoo.co.uk, Alltheweb and Altavista seem to permanetly have the bad algo.

Yahoo.com sometimes has the bad algo.

While, Yahoo.it, au.yahoo.com, Yahoo.dk have the good algo.

Which way are things heading or are we going to be stuck with some countries being able to have a good Yahoo index while others have a poor one ?

Seems that Y! cannot differentiate between content and sites linking to the content.

If you key in “money making ideas”, you get a bunch of directories that point to other sites with the original content. These directories are in the top ten. There’s also a webhosting site that’s in the top 20 (no category relevance and no key words).

And if you key in “free money making ideas” you get Yahoo! Geocities Website in the top 10/20 as well.

Seems like the way to get high ranking with this current algo is to create a directory that points to other people’s hard work… IMHO

A good job!

Finally Yahoo has managed to deal with some link exchange tricks.

Yahoo has a good team comparable with Google’s and in some cases they do a better job.

a good job?

I’m seeing inabilities to catch a 301 redirect and loads of old domains appearing for the same sites, even if they have a 301.

And the co.uk algo? Thats just dreadful. No wonder no one uses Yahoo there.

Yep – dont get this – Yahoo trying to punish the UK by giving them a cr@p algo.

Yahoo.com results look ok – but .co.uk, ATW and Altavista – what is going on there ?

Totally argree with the difference between Yahoo.com & Yahoo.co.uk

I have a UK based site with a .co.uk domain which since the algo change on yahoo.com has moved for all my 5 main keywords to between No 1-4.

At yahoo.co.uk i am ranked between no 7 & 12 With most of the site above me being shopping sites.

Google accounts for 70% of all searches in the UK

Are Yahoo going to sort its UK site out and start to provide more relevant serps

It is almost as if they have given up on the UK search results – which is bizare.

The only thing is the .com sometimes has the bad results that are being seen on ATW and Altavista so are things still spreading and which way ?

Yahoo UK results are changed dramatically. For example, my client was ranking on the first page for Car Finance and now I cant fint in first 5 pages. Also Yahoo UK is providing more and more directory listings instead of the actual content websites.

What to do next? How to get the rankings back?

Hi Imran,
I would try to analyse the first 10 sites coming up at Y! SERP now and try to find out the difference in site architecture and especially the link structure to your clients website.

Ingo,

The only problem is that it appears to be only Yahoo.co.uk, AlltheWeb and Altavista with the bad/less targeted serps – so these may not hold for to long so chasing the tactics of the top 10 in those results may not be so worthwhile.

Cheers

Stephen

Thanks for your suggestions Ingo. I have analysed my competitors websites and I cant find any big difference in content, titles and links.

Any other idea with respect to the Yahoo algo?

When’s the next UK update due?

Can nobody from Yahoo tell us what the hell is going on in the UK.

Have they gave up?

Don’t they Care?

Are these the true results?

Has the new update algo not been switched on in the UK?

I’m sure it is the latter one…. or i hope.

If Yahoo could get it right i’m sure that they could take some market share back from Goolge at the moment.

Although i’m on 1st page of google for all my keywords with a several no 1′s.

I still want the 12% arket share that Yahoo has.

I’m between no 1 & 3 for all these keywords at Yahoo.com was also with yahoo.co.uk untill this update

Come on Yahoo……

Yahoo.com (when it is showing the good ones) is producing some of the best results seen from Yahoo to date yet Yahoo.co.uk is a pile of ……

Surely the UK market means a bit to you guys or have you given up on us ?

I’d have 3 things to point about from analizing the SERPs of 50+ different keywords I watch on Yahoo!

1. Subdomains seem to have a great ranking power within the current algo, no matter they are pure spam and/or they’re 404′s.

2. Yahoo! is getting link addicted just like Google, which IMO isn’t that good, I always liked Yahoo! ( and used it for my own searches ) because of it’s stronger emphasize on ACTUAL RELEVANT CONTENT ( keyword rich content ), which used to be just relevant for what I was searching.

3. Although Yahoo! moves fast nowadays in terms of crawling/indexing, it should now try to copy Google in terms on link addictness. An modern algo should care about backlinks of course, but don’t go after them obsessively if you can’t sort them out in terms of quality and base rankings on them.

alessandro, I am not agree with you that YAHOO is behind the links like Google. Because I am continiously doing links for my website. I also have some authority links from related website but I still dropped in YAHOO.

I think YAHOO is giving more and more importance to the site content and avoiding the unneccessary anchor text.

Why does my website rank 2 on yahoo serp when I search on a pc at home but doesnt appear at all when I search on a pc at work?

Can someone please explain this to me ?

Imran Khan, maybe Yahoo! is using some kind of different ranking also for different industries ( thought I don’t really believe this ), this taking into consideration your observations. I can see a ton of proboards.com subdomains aquiring the top spots within the most SERPs I watch and their only backlinks are those from similar subdomains. Pretty weird IMHO!

Nancy: I wonder, are you using AOL as either your home or work ISP? If so it could be a geotargetting issue. There are different SERPs on yahoo.com depending upon the IP address of the ISP you are viewing the site from.

It seems to me that the UK serps are biased in favor of sites on UK servers. A pity, IMO, because many savvy UK companies run their sites on USA servers, they are cheaper, the service is better and for a company in London it’s just as easy to run a server in Detroit as it is one in Canary Wharf. The world is very small now and outsourcing abroad is a major UK corporate strategy.

Guys – please, please stop rewarding referrer and blog spam. When I look through the more competitive terms a very high proportion of top ranking sites are blog spam and even many genuine – looking sites seem to be up there thanks to blog and referrer spam links. Keeping these people out of our blogs and weblogs is a real and growing problem for many of us, and their sites contribute little or nothing that’s of real value to a searcher but you could really help us all, webmasters, searchers and your own company by filtering out the offenders – if there’s no longer any point they’ll stop messing up our blogs and logs, and your search results. Please. Thanks guys.

I paid to have a directory listing but then my homepage title in the SERPs changed to my company name? What’s with this? My company name doesn’t relate to rankings or presenting my value proposition. What a waste of $300.

I see slight improvements in the SERPs, some of those pure spam subdomains including redirects get removed from the top of the SERPs but still a lot of crap to get rid of. Now I wonder when a new Weather Report will be run out…