Is Google no longer crawling Yahoo!?

Yahoo has changed its method of linking to sites in its directory.

[cjtripnewton]

A couple weeks ago I noticed that links in the Yahoo! directory have changed in format. Prior to this, links in the Yahoo! directory were standard HTML links straight to the target site. Now, the links are passed through a stats script.

Since it just happened recently, we don't have any data on what this will do to Google's ability to use Yahoo! as a resource for citations (PageRank).

We're still seeing backward links from Yahoo!, but it's possible that Yahoo! backward links will no longer count after this next update. I.e., the backward links we're seeing now are old data (older than a couple weeks at any rate).

It's also possible that Google is working with Yahoo! on a way to index the directory without sending out a standard spider, perhaps by getting its own copy of the Yahoo! directory to spider.

In Brin's and Page's original paper, "The Anatomy of a Large-Scale Hypertextual Web Search Engine," there is specific reference to Yahoo! as an excellent source of citations. I'm wondering if that's about to end.

If Google were unable to index the Yahoo! directory, that would alter the PR landscape quite a bit.

There's plenty of room for speculation and conjecture here. Let's see what we can discover.

Has anyone heard from Yahoo! or Google on this issue. My inquiries have not been answered.

[WebGuerrilla]

Prior to this, links in the Yahoo! directory were standard HTML links straight to the target site. Now, the links are passed through a stats script.

It does look like the format has changed somewhat, but Yahoo has been passing links through a script since the Fall of 2000.

The last page I can find at archive.org that shows straight links in category pages is from Aug. 2000 [web.archive.org]

[cjtripnewton]

Shows how little attention I've paid to Yahoo!

Well WebGuerilla, that clears things up a bit for me. Thanks.

[herb]

With this last update I lost back links to Yahoo (3 listings), Zeal, and Look Smart. In fact the URL home page does not show up when typed into the search. A couple of interior pages come up when Google is asked to display pages that “contain the term”. (in this case the URL). The sites that “contain the term” are some forums that were discussing the content and dropped the URL without a HTML link. This is a small NFP community site and the only inbound links it had were the three directories.

The site is about six months old, the name was never registered before, and it’s never had an outbound link to other than, city/state governments’ sites and some newspaper articles.

It does have a Java on/off menu. I didn’t subscribe to recent the theory of a penalty for the Java in the last update but now I’m not sure what may have caused this situation.

As I was typing this, GoogleBot 64.68.82.xx came through and grabbed a single page.