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No B/S Yahoo! Search SEO Tips:

How to list well in Yahoo!: Yahoo! is a strong "on the page" optimization search engine. To list well you will need a decently high keyword density or many keyword rich incoming links.

Links are not weighted as heavily in Yahoo! Search as they are in Google. Yahoo! still counts many low quality links (such as those you would get from signing guestbooks).

Placing your keywords at the beginning of your page title is extremely important to help you rank well in Yahoo!. Keyword rich meta descriptions do a good job of aiding good keyword rich body copy to help you gain top Inktomi rankings.

I also try to use keyword rich subheaders to help boost Yahoo! Search / Inktomi / MSN rankings. Other than that I do not worry much about keyword density and I try to write the best I can for human eyes.

Yahoo! Search results are significantly easier to manipulate than Google results are.

If you have deep pockets or a large site that has indexing problems or have rapidly changing stock you may want to consider trying the Overture Site Match paid inclusion program.

You also can list off to the side or in a colored box at the top of Yahoo! Search results by participating in the Overture Precision Match program.

Yahoo! also hires a good number of human editors which remove "spam" from their search results.

Yahoo! Search History

Yahoo! was originally a directory, and Yahoo! spent much of 2003 acquiring and integrating the technologies behind their current search product. Yahoo! bought Inktomi for $235 million, and then later purchased Overture for $1.6 billion. Prior to being bought by Yahoo!, Overture had purchased the web search segments of AltaVista and AllTheWeb.

Yahoo! Search was launched in February 2004. They began crawling the web with a spider by the name of Yahoo! Slurp. This spider created a shared database which is used to power Yahoo! Search, AllTheWeb, AltaVista, and Inktomi powered partner sites.

Prior to shifting to its own technology Yahoo! was powered by Google.

Yahoo! Content Acquisition Program

Once Yahoo! started to power its own search product they announced that they were aggressively attempting to increase their index size. The content acquisition program has many parts which are covered in more detail in my article about it.

In summary they want to include more charity and quality resources free and businesses can pay a review fee and recurring click fees to be included in the Yahoo! Search index.

Try Yahoo! Search

How is Yahoo! Search Powered?

Yahoo! Search is powered from Yahoo! Slurp. Slurp is name of the original Inktomi spider. All Yahoo! owned search products share a common search database, and Yahoo! Search is powered from using the different best of breed pieces of AllTheWeb, AltaVista, and Inktomi.

Submit Your Site to Yahoo! Search

Submitting your site to Yahoo! Search does not guarantee inclusion in Yahoo! Search. The best way to get listed in Yahoo! Search is to get links from other sites indexed by Yahoo!. I usually start most of my SEO projects with fairly comprehensive directory registration.

Yahoo! Search Paid Inclusion & Yahoo! Directory Inclusion

Yahoo! Search does offer a paid inclusion plan (called Overture Site Match) and you do not need to pay for a Yahoo! Directory listing or the Overture Site Match program to list in Yahoo! Search.

If your site is accepted in the Yahoo! Directory or to the Overture Site Match program you will likely eventually be included in all Yahoo! owned search products. If your site is listed in the Yahoo! Directory and receives a spam penalty your site may still list in the directory and be removed from search results.

Generally I do not recommend the Overture Site Match program for most webmasters.

more info on the Yahoo! Directory
more info on Overture Site Match

If your site was excluded from Yahoo! Search and you want to appeal ensure your site complies with their spam guidelines and report what you fixed here reportsearchspam@yahoo-inc.com. Usually they want people to join the Overture Site Match program to get their site reviewed though.

501C non profits, public service, and other qualifying sites may receive free inclusion in the Overture Site Match program. The contact email for this program was psm@yahoo-inc.com when I last checked.

Is a Yahoo! Directory Listing Worth its Price?

I tried to cover that concept here on the Yahoo! Directory page.

Yahoo! Webrank

Yahoo! Webrank is a proprietary technology which Yahoo! gave conflicting information about at its release. Now I believe they say it is a measure of link popularity. When it originally came out I think they said it also factored in traffic.

Using the Yahoo! Companion and surfing your own site for a small amount of time might help get your content indexed by Yahoo! quicker.

Yahoo! Search Tools & Specifications:
Incoming Links	link:http://www.mysite.com
(without internal links)	link:mysite.com -inurl:mysite.com
Pages Indexed	www.mysite.com
Spider Name	Yahoo! Slurp
US Distribution	~25% Yahoo! Yahoo! Slurp also builds the indexes for AllTheWeb (powers Lycos) + AltaVista + Inktomi Partner Sites
Directory size	over 3 billion resources
	Report Spam to Yahoo! Yahoo! Spam Policy

Yahoo!'s Approach to Search

Google and Teoma are rarely edited by humans. Yahoo! believes their search product can be improved through editing.

Yahoo! checks editorial compliance of every site that uses their paid inclusion programs. They also have been manually reviewing search results and removing many low quality duplicate type affiliate sites or other sites which may be artificially manipulating their search index.

How to Know if Yahoo! Edited You Out

If your site was once in the search results and still shows up when you search for the domain but does not show up when you search for long strings of text on the page then likely you were filtered out.

For example I could search Yahoo! for something like "artificially manipulating their search index. How to Know if Yahoo! Edited You Out" to see if this page is listed.

If your site has been edited out you want to fix whatever you may think the problem is, check that you comply with their policies, and then request a site review at ystfeedback@yahoo.com. If that still does not get you reviewed you may need to join the Overture Site Match program to get your site reviewed.

Where do I Rank in Yahoo!

Yahoo! Search Rankings is a useful quick rank checking tool to help you see where you rank in Yahoo!.

Yahoo! Backlinks

When you check backlinks in Yahoo! (using linkdomain:www.mysite.com) they show backlinks to all pages in your site. If you want to check backlinks for a specific page you should use the full URL (such as linkdomain:www.mysite.com/ or link:www.mysite.com/index.html).

Although AltaVista, Inktomi, and AllTheWeb are all powered from the Yahoo! Search index sometimes they will show different backlinks.

Yahoo! also tends to show many backlinks that are outdated and shows the wrong address for many backlinks since they strugle to follow 301 redirects.

Advanced Yahoo! Search

Yahoo! Search SEO tricks

You can do multiple advanced link things at once with Yahoo! Search. For example

link:http://www.search-marketing.info inurl:partners -inurl:search-marketing.info

Would show you sites that link to this site with partners in their url. In addition you filter page title instead of url by using intitle: or you can change the word partners to

link
links
resources
or just about anything else that would show you the links are out of a textual context. This is a quick way to evaluate how and where to get some of the easiest backlinks that your competitors are enjoying. A good example for the intitle: might be a word like reciprical...

Another trick on the same concept. Using Yahoo! Search advanced features you can filter the domain to be .edu. If you have an exceptionally well thought out resource you can use the .edu filter and see who is linking to some of your competitors and search for certain words on that page. These .edu links are heavily weighted in Google search results...

An example of this trick might be that I could find out education sites that link to a search engine that no longer exist and update them. If I still get too many results I can search to see those that also have the words "Search Engine Watch" on the page, or further qualify the page by looking for more words in the URL. I could possibly help convince the professor that I know enough about search to ask him to link to me.

There is no substitute for tact, but most people will not know how you came to their site. If you use a search query which would indicate questionable intent then you may want to copy their link from the search engine results page and paste it in a new browser window. I never automate link requests, but I believe in making them easy to find.

At the 2004 Chicago SES Jon Glick stated that Yahoo! looks at both the links pointing to a page and links pointing to the site to determine the relevancy of a page.

How to list in Yahoo! Search: free get links from sites listed in Yahoo! Search or submit your site paid Overture Site Match (I do not recommend Overture Site Match / paid inclusion for most websites) or Overture Ads

Yahoo! Search provides results for:

Yahoo! Search - itself :)
In addition the Yahoo! Slurp spider powers the indexes of
AllTheWeb (which also powers Lycos)
AltaVista
Inktomi Partner sites
Many of these Yahoo! products also feed Meta search engines such as those powered by InfoSpace.

Yahoo! Search is powered by:

Yahoo! Search - primary search results
Overture - paid ads and Overture Site Match paid inclusion program.
Yahoo! Directory - provides directory results

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