Yahoo Store and Google PR

Any relationship?

[karyam]

Any idea if a Yahoo Store (with a link to it on my main website) would increase my Google PR significantly?

[4crests]

Karyam...

If you are linking to their site from yours. NO.

[Weblamer]

Actually, I have wondered about this myself,

A competetor of my company runs a yahoo store. The keywords for the products (usually serial and model numbers) are the same as ours. however when I do a google search on these keywords, his little yahoo store almost always comes up first. And he is a little guy in the industry i am in. Makes me wonder.

[karyam]

so, 4crest, what does that imply? That if the Yahoo store links to my website, then it increases my PR?

[JFord]

I would think that having a yahoo store would indeed up your PR as, if I'm not mistaken, having the store automatically gets you into the yahoo directory therefore giving you a link from a rather high PR site. Of course all of this is conjecture on my part and I maybe wrong.

[4crests]

I have 4 Yahoo stores myself. And yes, I do believe that my PR was helped by the fact that I have YAHOO in my URL. However, I don't think it would help to link to a Yahoo store on your site. You would just be losing PR. It would help the Ystore, but not your site.

[Beachboy]

Having a Yahoo store CAN have a very beneficial effect. How much benefit comes your way is going to depend on the PageRank value that flows from any Yahoo listing.

The amount of that value depends on the PR of the Yahoo page from which the PR flows, divided by the number of outbound links on that page.

There is another factor. Yahoo uses the site title for the link. If important keywords appear in the site title (with everything else being equal), a bigger boost will be had than if no keywords appear in the site title turned into a link.

For example, you're selling blue fuzzy widgets. If the site's title is Smith & Jones Blue Fuzzy Widgets, which Yahoo converts to an outbound link to your store or site, you are miles ahead when someone searches for blue fuzzy widgets. But that benefit goes away if you get listed merely as: Smith & Jones.

[karyam]

So let's say I have a main site where I sell all kinds of widgets. This site is already listed in Yahoo (no "widget" in the domain name). I want to create a Yahoo store for blue widgets only and I name this site bluewidgets.com. Is this store likely to have a good PR on Google when people search for blue widgets? Should I link bluewidgets.com to my main website? Should I link my main website to bluewidgets.com? Sorry for all the questions, I'm learning... :)

[Beachboy]

I'm not familiar with Yahoo stores at all, but where the directory itself is concerned:

Name the site: blue-widgets.com (so the indexing mechanism can parse the keywords.

Name the business: Karyam's Blue Widgets (these words will be converted into a link to your store or site, important to do!)

Neither of the above is about PageRank, it's about capitalizing on how Yahoo works.

[karyam]

Thank you Beachboy. Right now I'm actually more interested in the impact of Yahoo stores on Google's PR. My competitor's Yahoo store is #1 when doing a search in Google using my most important kw, but his main website isn't even in the top 10.

[4crests]

I ranked pretty well for years with my original website. I started a Yahoo Store a little over a year ago. I did everything as BEACHBOY has stated. Within a few months my Yahoo Store ranked MUCH better than my old site. Over the course of the last year I've pretty much given up on my old domain.

My sales have skyrocketed since singing on with Yahoo. The only thing I don't like about the situation is that my old domain (Widgets.com)ranks much lower than my Ystore URL [Store.Yahoo.com...]

I am happy with the sales, but I feel too dependant on Yahoo Store. If Yahoo decided to give up on Ystore, or My Ystore got banned from Yahoo, I Would be up a creek since it's my Ystore URL that is now plastered all over the place.

If I had it to do over again, I might try harder to promote my old domain a little more.

[karyam]

Was you old domain optimized for Google?

[4crests]

yes, it was. but it was just a lot easier to rank well once i got Yahoo in my url.

[karyam]

I see. Thanks for all the info!