john_k - 2:42 pm on Jun 9, 2006 (gmt 0)

It is an easy way out for Yahoo. They continue to avoid the real issue - And that is that they need to improve the manner in which they qualify sites in their rankings.

If a Yahoo user follows a link from the search results and hits a website that throws up ads or does immediate redirects, it reflects poorly on the website and it is the website owners fault.

If a Yahoo user follows a link from the search results and hits a website that has been disfigured because Yahoo's frame has disabled Javascript, it still reflects poorly on the website, but this time it is Yahoo's fault.

In either case, the user is not going to consider that their bad experience was due to Yahoo.

And, to the argument "They are sending you traffic", what good is it? If I get no revenue from that traffic on my content site and my eCommerce site is degraded to the point of uselessness?

In the end, they are also harming their own utility to the user. The word will slowly spread that Yahoo tends to give search results with links to sites that don't work.

Yahoo should put more effort into pushing poorly behaved sites to the bottom (or out of) of their rankings.