Weather Report: Yahoo! Search Index Update

Dear Yahoo Search Team,

Tim has promised more than 2 months ago that No Yahoo Directory tag would be out very soon. After reading that, I payed $300 for a directory listing and now my listing description is not what I would like it to be. I really need a No Yahoo Directory tag and so do many, many, many other people.

Can you please let us know when exactly such a tag would be implemented?

Thanks,

Josh

Why is yahoo changing Titles in serps? A straight answer from Yahoo on this would be nice. Thanks

You know its gonna be a great update when sites like these making it to the top ten for multiple phrases. I really like the “unescape” redirect. If you stop the page loading before it redirects, view the source, really cool. I guess “blackhat” is the way to go. Check it out: http://xoomer.alice.it/bad-loan/bad-credit-cards.html

I have always stuck up for Yahoo Search, but with no response from Yahoo as to why they have replaced so many site titles with made up titles I am quickly losing some respect. If it is a glitch, let us know, but don’t ignore us when we inquire about it.

I would also like to know the explanation behind the lowercase titles. There are threads on webmasterworld and elsewhere about it, but no official response yet…?

The server that uses a low cost, specific virtual domain is seen to cause the symptom of the cash only of smell TOP page etc. in Japan.
Moreover, the influence goes out to the site of some others who coexist in same to site where such a symptom is caused IP, and the number of pages to which others’ sites are gradually cached has decreased.
I think that details are understood when the site where a similar symptom where it disappears is seen and the site of same IP are surveyed.

The one to disappear is seen as for about 56 backing links seeing on the site where it disappears though the site where comparatively a lot of backing links are collected.
When this is left, I think that it becomes possible the drop of the site etc. by the attacker though most parts caused by the backing link seem to become.

Been searching all the forums for the title issue and can find no definite answers, come on Priyank Garg please give us an answer, so if it is something with the sites we can get it straightened out, Thanks.

There has been a noticeable attempt to Algo-filter out spam sites or sites that have been overly SEO’d

However, there appears to have been many false positives, so more than ever before, GOOD sites have been excluded.

Overall, the SERPs are LESS relevant, but more spam has been excluded than ever before in Yahoo’s recent history.

Yahoo is about on the level of ASK in terms of relevancy, above MSN, but below Google in many ways.

It appears that there has been to much of an algo filtering and too much emphasize on anti seo tactics.

Also, many TITLES have been changed, so that they are now reflecting their frequent backlinks anchor text as opposed to the titles in their HTML.

Also, some title are lower-case, making the Websites less alluring in the SERPs.

If this is a bug, it needs to be addressed…ASAP

I’ve figured out the protocol for getting listed on the first couple of pages for quite a few tag words on Google, but Yahoo leaves me stumped: )

Thanks everyone for pointing out the problem with lowercase titles and titles based on anchor text.

It turns out that this was an error from recent updates and we will be rolling out a fix very shortly. Once again, thank you for the feedback and keep it coming

Sincerely
Priyank

Thanks for the reply, will be watching for the fix.

If it any thing like Panama update were all in trouble. So far its so so…

I think you should stop buying .com’s and fixing them. In fact, stop fixing any thing, stop fixing things that ant broken, stop buying things that dont need fixing.

The things that needs fixing never get fixed, just more broken…dang get rid of that Directory!

I see you fixed your “Post a comment” form :)

Yahoo, you did it only took 2 years.

Yahoo Search Team,

Any word on the support of the No Yahoo Directory tag mentioned in October? Was this included in the latest January update?

I wish Yahoo would get back more to relavence. A search for ‘steam baths’ gets you a blog site with no mention of steam baths. http://search.yahoo.com/search;_ylt=A0geutSglbZF.U8BnKtXNyoA?p=steam+baths&ei=UTF-8&fr=yfp-t-501&x=wrt
Yahoo used to be extremely on-topic and for a person that hates Google and wants Yahoo to succeed, it is very upsetting. They used to get good results, but now, it seems they are making you pay for results if you are a retail site… sad.. probably good for stock holders, bad for surfers.

Josh and Andrew,

For “No Yahoo! Directory Tag” support see:

How do I change the abstract shown in the search results for my page?

http://help.yahoo.com/help/us/ysearch/indexing/indexing-11.html

It explains how to use these:

<META NAME=”ROBOTS” CONTENT=”NOODP”>
or
<META NAME=”Slurp” CONTENT=”NOODP”>

Seems like you are on to something Blake. In the past, Yahoo has found redirects, even embedded in javascript, but your listed sites and proboards.com are doing no no’s and are no longer being caught. KW such as steam generators, steam baths, steam bath (single is now different than plural) and steam showers all point to a proboards.com website with the title being just the kw itself. Most cases in top positions. I hope the new algorithm will change all of that since my site stop showing up anywhere with no tricks, when before it was almost always #1.

Why u have not replied to above mentioned questions yet. When you are going to remove spam from serps? I have noticed spam coming mostly in all sectors.

If you want to come ahead of Google than try to fix such problems fast and put filters which does not provide space to spammers.

Please let us know when all the spam is going out of serps.

It looks as though the title replacement issue has been fixed, in my area of the world at least. Thanks!

For everyone complaining about spam, Google has it too. Come on, “Let me know when you get rid of all the spam”? All the engines fight this every day. If you see something, report it on the spam report page, don’t just comment on the blog.

As I think has been pointed out by another poster, NOODP works for Yahoo too, so ranting about the lack of it just looks silly.

I realize we all see the world through our own filters of rank and profit, but I for one am glad that Yahoo and MSN are keeping search diversity alive.

Thanks Yahoo, looks like the titles are getting straightened out.

As for the above post “Erica” whats the matter do you own sites like I listed in my recent post? Or maybe one of the ones I have listed? As for reporting it, where is this “spam report page” for websites not email?

I hope my question won’t be off-topic. I notice that my site is in and out of the top 100 almost everyday, most of the time. (homepage in the results page in the morning and gone in the evening or vice versa) Do you have advice or tips that I must do to stabilize my website ranking?

Your kind understanding of my concern is very much appreciated. Thank you.

NOODP may work for DMOZ listings (a.k.a. Open Directory Project) but it does not stop the Yahoo Directory listings from appearing, and that is what we are praying (a.k.a. ranting) for because some of the Yahoo Directory listings leave a lot to the imagination (a.k.a. being polite).

You are right Erica, all Search sites have spam but the difference is, reporting spam to Google takes about 2 days to get rid of them, Yahoo takes.. well, they still haven’t removed something I told them about 2 weeks ago at http://add.yahoo.com/fast/help/us/ysearch/cgi_reportsearchspam

On another note, I am very happy Yahoo is making the new change in algorithm. Yahoo has normally been very on-topic. Hopefully they will allow the NOODP tag to work and get on the websites that feature spam quicker.

Hi Priyank,

Is the comment posted by “Yahoo! Search Resources for Webmasters” legit i.e. posted by Yahoo Search team? Do you plan to use NOODP tag to block Yahoo Directory listings as well? If so, when can we expect that to happen?

Thanks,

Josh

Hello, since quite some time now , I can see only the main keyword of my site in Yahoo index . I hope this will be fix sooner or later .

Thanks

Blake, you’re whining and you post too much.

While I don’t think this is the best update in the world, it’s not really much worse than Google. In fact, I think Yahoo search has been better than Google for awhile. I actually find what I’m looking for more quickly with Yahoo (but still takes work). Google brings up everything but what I’m looking for, especially when I do academic searches. With them it seems to be all about what site has more clout, not what words are next to one another on the page. I like not having to put my phrases in quotes so much when I use Yahoo. I wish I wouldn’t have to do it at all though. My favorite results would have to be Google in 2002/2003. I never had to use operators to find what I wanted.

As things settle down my main keywords are using Directory Title, one major keyword is good, the other keyword move from page 3 to page 6. We are in the process of cleaning our htm code, pages where we lost ground have retuned to its rightful spot. No black hat, its not our nature. Suffering, is more like it.

Some spam has moved off page one, but others with duplicate or mulitiple sites and pages have move up, with at least one url per page.

That being said, for those who spend to much time searching spam and reporting it! Just work on your own site it will bring more benefit.

Dropped from being indexed by Yahoo and we are unable to find out why.

Google index’s 20,500 of our pages at http://www.lawyersandsettlements.com , many with a page rank of 6, and Yahoo index’s 5 pages.

Yahoo gives 14 reasons a site may be dropped.

I believe we comply with all 14 of yahoo’s requirements for a legitimate web site- we have 5 full time writers that create original content for us as well as a digest of information.
• We have zero pages that harm accuracy, diversity or relevance of search results -
• We have zero pages dedicated to directing the user to another page
• We have zero pages that have substantially the same content as other pages
• We have zero sites with numerous, unnecessary virtual hostnames – we do have 20 sub domains.
• We have zero pages auto generated or of of little value
• We have zero pages using methods to artificially inflate search engine ranking
• Nowhere do we use text that is hidden from the user
• We have zero pages that give the search engine different content than what the end-user sees
• We have zero excessively cross-linking sites to inflate a site’s apparent popularity, we do cross link to a very few directly related sites.
• We have zero pages built primarily for the search engines
• We never mention let alone misuse a competitor name.
• We have zero sites offering the same content, Other sites do copy us and are sent Cease and Desist orders to them and their Service providers.
• We have zero pop-ups, interfering with user navigation
• We have zero pages that seem deceptive, fraudulent or provide a poor user experience.
And we don’t allow robots to crawl our moderated forums thus avoiding the possibility of someone sneaking in bad outbound links.
I too want Yahoo to succeed as a great search engine.
Our site has thousands of visitors every day, all from google.
Is there something in yahoo’s algorithms that is misreading our site or
Is their something about our site that I don’t know about?

I don’t this would affect me since Yahoo! doesn’t provide any traffic for my content. Anyway, it’s really exciting to expect something more. Especially since everything is gonna go tumbling up and down.

Read my post on this topic :) :- http://webmaster-dome.com/?p=89

Regarding the new Yahoo Search Engine

I find the changes very disturbing. So much so that I’ve gone back to Google.

I’ve not made any changes to my site, yet I’ve gone from #1 to no ranking at all. I always came up as #1 or #2 in the over 2 million sites found. The search words are Chinese Porcelain, and for many years I’ve been in the top 10. I’ve not tried to trick the bots and spiders by creating hundreds of pages, nor multiple keywords. In fact, I have only 30 pages with just a handful of keywords on my main page. I don’t sell anything either. This, compared to my nearest competitor who has 1,200 pages with hundreds of keywords. and selling items as well. I was always on top, now I’ve disappeared completely.

I’m not sure if I like the new changes. Maybe I should create about 1,170 additional pages, fill up with hundreds of keywords, and sell things in order to compete. Seems unfair. I like the old Yahoo search engine better.

JP

Hello again,

Perhaps patience is a good policy. My previous post may have been premature. I did the search just now, one day later, and I’m back up to a ranking of #2. That’s more accurate.

Thank you,

JP

Is there any update on this? Is Yahoo still sorting things out with the reindex and spam? Thousands of my serps have seemingly been dropped from yahoo and it started with this last update. I have seen no change since.

The latest update was weird and my ranking drop all the way to 400 from top ten.

Totally dissapointed with the algo update…..

Is there some kind of aging delay on the new algo update ?