Weather Report Blog Posts

Over the next few days, we'll be rolling out some changes to our crawling, indexing and ranking algorithms. While we expect the update will be completed soon, as you know, throughout this process you may see some ranking changes and page shuffling in the index.

Also, some of you pointed out some issues with Deleting URLs in Site Explorer a few days ago. This has now been addressed and your Deletes should continue to work on Site Explorer.

To share your thoughts on this with other Yahoo! Search users, please visit the Site Explorer Suggestion Board.

Priyank Garg & Sharad Verma
Yahoo! Search

Welcome to our first weather report of 2008. Over the last few days, we've been rolling out some changes to our crawling, indexing and ranking algorithms. While we expect the update will be completed soon, as you know, throughout this process you may see some ranking changes and page shuffling in the index.

To share your thoughts on this with other Yahoo! Search users, please visit the Site Explorer forum.

Sharad Verma
Yahoo! Search

Over the last few days, we've been rolling out some changes to our crawling, indexing and ranking algorithms. While we expect the update will be completed soon, as you know, throughout this process you may see some ranking changes and page shuffling in the index.

We appreciate your feedback on this, so please keep it coming.

Priyank Garg
Yahoo! Search

We've rolled out some changes to our index with fresh web data and updates to our crawling, indexing and ranking algorithms over the last few days. We expect the update will be completed very soon. Throughout this process you may see some changes in ranking as well as some shuffling of the pages in the index.

This is the first update after the launch of Dynamic URL Rewriting in Site Explorer. We've had millions of URLs rewritten based on your submissions and your sites should have seen smarter crawling from Yahoo! Slurp as a result. You will see further benefits in how your site is represented in the index from this update. Your input improves relevance and coverage for users in search results, particularly in relation to your site.

Thank you for collaborating with us to improve our understanding of your site. If you haven't yet, login and try out the feature to authenticate your sites.

Keep the feedback coming...

Priyank Garg
Yahoo! Search

If you haven't been busy at SES in our neck of the woods this week, you might have noticed we've been rolling out fresh updates to our crawl, index and ranking systems -- ones that are relatively significant for webmasters.

In response to feedback from the community, we're reducing our crawling machines by a significant amount with this update, so you might have observed a significant reduction in crawl load from us along with fewer machine IP addresses hitting you over the last few days.

The new crawler continues to improve comprehensiveness and freshness of coverage while also enhancing crawl efficiency, which reduces spurious load on websites.

We had a brief bout of increased crawl load while testing and rolling out updates, like support for 'Dynamic URL Rewriting' in Site Explorer, announced yesterday. Don't fret, though, if you're concerned about seeing an increased load. We've initiated efforts and established policies internally to ensure this doesn't happen, even temporarily, in the future.

Thanks and keep the feedback coming.

Priyank Garg
Yahoo! Search

We've been rolling out some changes to our fresh web data and crawling, indexing and ranking algorithms over the last few days. We expect the update will be completed by the weekend. So, as you know, throughout this process you may see some changes in ranking as well as some shuffling of the pages in the index.

Thanks for keeping the feedback coming.

Priyank Garg
Yahoo! Search

We rolled out some changes to our index and ranking algorithm last night. So, as you know, throughout this process you may see some changes in ranking as well as some shuffling of the pages included in the index. This update should be complete very soon.

Thanks for keeping the feedback coming.

Priyank Garg
Yahoo! Search

We just rolled out a new search index last night. So, as usual, you may see some changes in ranking as well as some shuffling of the pages that are included in the index throughout this process. This update should be complete very soon.

Thank you to all that have submitted spam reports through Site Explorer. These reports are continuously being included in our index updates. We've received some very high-quality feedback and have found these useful to keep spam out of our results.

Keep the feedback coming.

Priyank Garg
Yahoo! Search

We are in the process of rolling out some changes to our search results. As usual, you may see some changes in ranking as well as some shuffling of the pages that are included in the index throughout this process. This update will roll out this evening and will be complete very soon.

Keep the feedback coming or share it with the Yahoo! Search team directly at SES in New York next week! We'll be presenting at the following panels, so come by for a visit:

• Sitemaps & URL Submission -- Priyank Garg, Product Manager, Yahoo! Search, describes the developments in tools to interface with search engines, such as the Sitemaps protocol and Site Explorer.

• Duplicate Content & Multiple Site Issues -- Amit Kumar, Engineering Manager, Yahoo! Search, addresses the different concerns and issues of duplicate content and explores various solutions.

• Robots.txt Summit -- Sean Suchter, Director of Yahoo! Search Technology, Yahoo!, discusses opportunities to improve the Robots.txt protocol

• Meet the Crawlers -- Amit Kumar, Engineering Manager, Yahoo! Search, answers questions on Yahoo! Search and our crawler, Yahoo! Slurp

• Search Engine Q&A on Links -- Sean Suchter, Director of Yahoo! Search Technology, Yahoo!, provides answers to the audiences link-based questions.

• CSS, Ajax, Web 2.0 & Search Engines -- Amit Kumar, Engineering Manager, Yahoo! Search, explores issues and solutions, from an SEO perspective, on the new developments in Web 2.0.

• Social Search Overview -- Tomi Poutanen, Senior Director of Product Management, Yahoo! Social Search, discusses opportunities in social search including tagging, click through tracking, search history features and other methods.

• Meet the Mobile Search Engines -- Paul Yiu, Product Manager for Mobile Search, Yahoo! Search Marketing, discusses how mobile search operates and where it may be going.

We hope to see you at SES New York!

Priyank Garg
Yahoo! Search

We�re adding support for the Meta tag called �NOYDIR� that will complement the �NOODP� Meta tag, which we already support. If you�re unfamiliar, the �NOODP� Meta tag is basically a way for webmasters to indicate that Open Directory Project (ODP) titles and abstracts will not be used in search results for their pages. While we continue to pull from various sources to provide the best title and abstract for a given page in search results, we realize that webmasters may still want the ability to exclude titles and abstracts from the Yahoo! Directory. So, as promised, we�re providing support for �NOYDIR� which will recognize the following Meta tags on your pages:

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


or

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


For pages with this tag, we will not use Yahoo! Directory titles or abstracts for your URL in web search results. This will grant webmasters the ability to participate in the Yahoo! Directory Submit program and benefit from inclusion in the Yahoo! Directory, while maintaining control over URL titles and abstracts in search. This will not have any effect on the Yahoo! Directory Search experience, which will continue to use the Yahoo! Directory and title abstract information.

We are re-indexing content on the web to launch this change, and you should immediately begin to see the changes on Yahoo! US, Yahoo! Japan and Yahoo! Korea. (Other regions will roll-out in the future.) This will be accompanied by the usual ranking changes and page shuffling that is typical of weather updates.

If you have any questions, please refer to our webmaster resources page or visit the Site Explorer Suggestion Board.

Thanks!

Priyank Garg
Product Manager, Yahoo! Search

We are in the process of rolling out some changes to our search results. As usual, you may be seeing some changes in ranking as well as some shuffling of the pages that are included in the index throughout this process. This update began last night and should be complete very soon.

Keep the feedback coming!

Priyank Garg
Yahoo! Search

We strive to show the most useful information in search results. We look at multiple sources for titles and abstracts, including page content, anchor text in the links to a page, Yahoo! Directory and the Open Directory Project (ODP); and we pick the best based on our algorithms. You might have seen some of the features that we have implemented with this approach, such as quick links for Wikipedia, and local business data. However, some webmasters have had issues with titles and abstracts in ODP and have adopted the 'NOODP' META tag to indicate to search engines not to use them. As Tim Mayer promised a few days earlier talking to Barry Schwartz on The Pulse, we are launching support for this tag in tonight's weather update.

We will recognize the following META tags on your pages:

<META NAME="ROBOTS" CONTENT="NOODP">

or

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

If we find any of these tags on your page, we will not consider ODP titles or abstracts as candidates for your URL in search results. We are reindexing content on the web to launch this change. This will be accompanied by the usual ranking changes and page shuffling in the index that are typical of weather updates.

If you have any questions or concerns, please visit the Site Explorer forum or refer to our webmaster resources page.

Thanks!

Priyank Garg
Product Manager, Yahoo! Search

We launched a new Yahoo! Search Crawler, Yahoo! Slurp earlier this week. In addition to crawling the Internet faster, our new crawler is more efficient at visiting websites. As a result, site owners will notice as much as a 25% reduction in the number of requests and bandwidth consumed by the crawler.

While transitioning to the new crawler over the past few weeks, we had been running both crawlers in tandem. In some cases, this increased the frequency of Yahoo Search requests to websites. Now, with the new crawler in full production, we have turned off the old crawler and site owners should see a much lower crawl load without a loss in content coverage.

With this change of behavior in the crawler, you may see some shuffling of the pages that are included in the index and some changes in ranking as well.

Let us know what you observe through our feedback form, or if you have any technical issues with Slurp please contact support.

Thank you to everyone who helped us with this update!

David Simpson
Yahoo! Slurp Team

Priyank Garg
Yahoo! Search

If you're tuning back in to the Searchblog after watching the World Cup, then you?re just in time for our first weather report of the summer!

We rolled out an index update last night. As usual, you may see some changes in ranking as well as some shuffling of the pages that are included in the index.

Remember, we recently beefed up our online help and resources, and the best way to provide us with feedback is via the online form.

Please write in and let us know what you think.

Thanks!

Rajat Mukherjee
Yahoo! Search

We rolled out another index update late last week. You?ll see some changes in ranking along with what is in the index. For feedback, we are moving away from the email address "ystfeedback at yahoo.com" to a simple form available at http://help.yahoo.com/search/feedback.

Please write in and let us know what you think.

Thanks again!

Priyank Garg
Product Manager
Yahoo! Search

We rolled out an index update last night. As usual, you may see some changes in ranking as well as some shuffling of the pages that are included in the index. Those who follow these weather updates may have noticed that they are occurring more frequently; this is the result of improvements to the indexing system.

Thank you all for your input and keep the feedback coming!

Priyank Garg
Product Manager
Yahoo! Search