martinibuster - 8:08 am on Mar 1, 2006 (gmt 0)

First off Bob, my knee jerk reaction to most anything you post is to agree. You make a good point. However, I think in this case, dependent on a user's situation and goals, there is plenty of room for a variance in opinion.

I can't recommend to clients that they pay $299 a year to have their Yahoo search results badly handicapped.

If your client already ranks in the top 3 it's a no-brainer to give them that advice.

If they're not ranking, then it's a different situation, imo.

While a directory listing does cause the directory title and description to show, what is the alternative? I'll tell you: Your title plus an out of context random snippet from your web page.

The text on your web page is contextually relevant for your web page. A machine selected snippet from your web page may not be relevant within the context of a SERP snippet. Take a second look at those serps and I think you may agree that those random snippet descriptions are sub-optimal.

Looking over the top three of a typical serp, I see the top two have a huge block of seemingly random text that does little to induce a click.

The third position has the name of the company and a coherent description of the company and the product it offers, and the benefit it offers. That is the beauty of a well considered description.

I prefer to control my SERP snippet
I prefer to control the SERP snippet, and when it comes to Yahoo, that may mean a directory listing.