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You'll get different answers about the Directory. There are lots of threads talking about the same issue. I say the answer is as clear a yes as possible, but others have other ideas.
Anyways, what are the benefits of the paid directory listing w/Yahoo?
[webmasterworld.com...]
[webmasterworld.com...]
For me, the Yahoo Directory is a must for a serious website.
The page was New Years related, so maybe that's why. I just wish that it hit all DCs before New Years then it would have had tons of traffic...
Moral of the story - If the $300 is a lot of money to you or your site, perhaps save it for something else. Just create great content and someday, just maybe, a page or two will be lucky enough to be put inside the Directory.
I also don't buy the whole changing of the description bit. If you select a good enough category, you don't have to worry about it. The guys at Y will write a good enough description.
Can anyone shed any light on what he means....
i.e. getting a link in the Yahoo! directory will lead to you getting even more links.
>>>>>getting a link in the Yahoo! directory will lead to you getting even more links<<<<<
But for £25 per month I can get a sponsered advert on Yahoo for 12 months, so that'll be what I go with.
I bet they won't refuse my entry for a paid listing.... If they did - they would lose much business from web customers - soooooo, why steal advertiser's directory entry cash/payment?
All of my sites got a decent PR bump, and my most "nichey" site also got a huge rush of traffic from other similar sites using the directory's RSS feed for new listings. Other benefits include Google crawling my site more frequently - which is a function of PR, of course - and a nice bump in Yahoo's SERPs.
As I said, I've been lucky enough to get in free with all my sites so far. It's hard to say whether I would have paid 300 bucks for the benefit, though. One of my sites was worth it, for sure, as it turns out. But you can't really know until you do it, I believe. It's hit or miss.
For me, the Yahoo Directory is a must for a serious website.
tedster - This may be one of the few times that I'm going to disagree with you.
I feel that Yahoo's policy of defaulting to the Yahoo Directory title in Yahoo crawler based search results puts the home pages of companies listed in the Directory at distinct disadvantage. The Directory title is generally the company name only, and IMO this is not likely to attract as many home-page click-throughs as well as a carefully crafted page title.
Yahoo said publicly this year that they would change this, and they haven't. For this reason, I've continued to advise most clients not to get Yahoo listings.
The exceptions would be certain types of businesses, like hotels, where it's perhaps likely that there might be some drill-down traffic in the Directory, say within a city or geo-area.
This hypothetical performance difference isn't something that one can easily A-B test, and I'm making one big assumption... a safe one, I think... that these days, most people search the web rather than drill-down in the directory. (I'd love to know what the actual stats are).
As to the supposed authority/PageRank benefits of a Yahoo listing, from all I've seen in backlink data, I'm assuming that, with its link redirect, a Yahoo.com US listing does not pass on these benefits. Possibly Yahoo Singapore or whatever does pass on linking benefits, but I don't know that Yahoo Singapore means that much.
I think if Yahoo cleaned up the title situation, I might be more open to the rest, but I can't recommend to clients that they pay $299 a year to have their Yahoo search results badly handicapped.
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.
"from all I've seen in backlink data, I'm assuming that, with its link redirect, a Yahoo.com US listing does not pass on these benefits"
Look at the Google cache of most Directory pages crawled this month. Clear links are shown. Regardless of that though, Google and Yahoo have always recognized that a site is in the Directory, as dir.yahoo.com shows up in backlinks.
If a site isn't in the Yahoo Directory, it isn't a serious site, or the people behind the SEO are doing a poor job. $300 is totally trivial to any significant web business while the benefits are wonderful (assuming you aren't a lousy website title-r).
Bland cache example:
[64.233.179.104...]
If your client already ranks in the top 3 it's a no-brainer to give them that advice.
Well, I've given it a bunch of thought anyway, even with the ones that never slip down to #4. ;) Company name is simply less attractive to click on, and that for me is a major factor.
If you have a sensibly titled website...
"Sensible" has nothing to do with many company names, steveb. If I get to them before the founder does, maybe I have a shot at it, but generally, with corporate clients, I'm stuck with the registered business name that the client has gotten used to and that Yahoo insists on using.
Take a second look at those serps and I think you may agree that those random snippet descriptions are sub-optimal.
mb - What you're saying is that Yahoo is ignoring a page's meta description as well as its title. I can imagine for some sites this is a valid argument. I generally prefer the snippets I get to the Yahoo Directory descriptions. Can't comment on all variants or long tail searches or other people's pages, of course.
Note that, regarding titles, we're talking about the default home page listings only. Inner pages get to keep their own titles, but they do lose their meta descriptions and thus also return snippets (when there's a match).
In Yahoo serps, btw, as of about six months ago, as Tim Mayer presented it at SES, this is how things were returned...
1) feed titles and descriptions returned as specified.
2) Yahoo Directory titles and descriptions
3) best match to query between...
- contextual abstracts (on page)
- meta titles and meta descriptions (from the page)
4) if Yahoo could not generate anything
- ODP
- or anchor text (for title)
At that point, Tim described the Yahoo Directory as "an overlay" which was to be "moved back" in the above pecking order, if I understood him correctly. I saw it happen for about a day... cheered a lot and was about to sign some clients up for Yahoo right away... and when the Yahoo titles and descriptions came back, I was glad I hadn't.
Look at the Google cache of most Directory pages crawled this month.
steveb - Thanks for this. It's almost persuasive. I agree that the $300 is trivial. For me it's ultimately about the title.
What you're saying is that Yahoo is ignoring a page's meta description as well as its title.
Comment on the above so it's not misunderstood.... I'm not talking about Yahoo "ignoring" or paying attention to the title or meta description in terms of ranking. Rather, that these aren't being used by Yahoo in generating the serps.
Of course it does, which goes back to why some folks have problems with Yahoo because they just don't have a clue how to name a website, including the concept of a company name.
Ford
Ford Motor Company
Ford Automobile Manufacturers
Ford Car Sales and Automobile Manufacturing
etc.
Chhose your poison, but if you dopely title the site "Ford" that is what you will get.
...which goes back to why some folks have problems with Yahoo because they just don't have a clue how to name a website, including the concept of a company name.
steveb - Generally, Yahoo uses the company name, not the website name. If this thread were about choosing company names for a new web company, I'd be substantially with you, at least for some kinds of companies.
But you've taken my point about "sensible" and company names out of context. It was referring to the fact that the cows are already out of the barn by the time I'm dealing with a company name. So, while I've learned when to suggest to clients that they rename their companies, I've also learned, perhaps more importantly, when not to.
