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Also posted a story at my site -- if a moderator wants to do a direct link, pretty easy to spot.
but surprised that you say its getting bigger, given the press reports of dissastisfied webmasters, informal reports of affiliates (including here on WebmasterWorld) struggling to get income, and lower commissions and click through rates compared to 2 years ago. Always interested to hear why. Of course we would have to start a new thread!
Where it all falls down is when google becomes huge and turns evil. Now that's the time to really cry into your beer. Right now is nothing but a potentially concerning step on the path to the darkside.
You are complaining about something that is surely less bad than an alternative that happens a lot now. So you are in a category where $299 can get you a #4. Well guess what, in most competive categories all $299 gets you is the right to be in top 100 or so. I don't want to sound mean here, but your complaint is like you are speaking Martian to people in categories where deep pockets throw money at the directory. Independents have no chance the old way. I spent $299 on the Yahoo directory. A competitor spent $12,000 to *buy* the top spot. That is bad for users and surely bad for little guys.
Sorry SteveB, but your argument doesn't fly with me. Mr. Deep pockets does exactly the same thing with Google. How difficult is it for Deep Pockets to create 40 complete sites and and get them all listed in Google? The only difference is that with Google he can do what you suggest for free. Happens all the time.
Mr. Deep Pockets has an advantage. Nothing you or I or anyone else can do will change the fact that money talks and big money talks with a commanding voice. If Mr. Deep Pockets decides to OWN your category in 6 months he will spend the money, hire the SEOs, buy the domains and OWN it.
ma & pa can't buy a prime time tv ad and pretty soon they won't be able to compete on the internet except in niche little places & communities like local cable tv and local newspapers and the bulletin board in the grocery store.
enjoy it while you've got it
My point EXACTLY! Anyone who doesn't see this is only fooling themself!
>>>And here's another "let's pretend". Let's pretend Yahoo hasn't changed the actual way it presented results, so directory results are still the default. But let's also pretend Yahoo has only changed (radically) it's search algorithm, and (as an extra twist) has merged some of the categories where there were few listings... I think there;s no arguing this is 100% within their right? Then what? I think a large part of the people complaining here vocally (though not all) would still be complaining that this is not what they were paying for, and talk about suing Yahoo or asking for a refund... >>>
I disagree with you on this. At least if they changed the algo you would still have a chance of being ranked high and shown 1st. Now with this change you have no chance!
>>>And I disagree with that . The people who complain are after all mainly those who already had listings in Yahoo and lost their investment. Now assuming a hypothetical Yahoo algorithm change would have been removing the effect of PR and shifting the search results all around (for example removing the weight of keywords in title and URL, or considering any hyphens that appear as part of a word so "keyword1-keyword2" could only be found for "keyword1-keyword2" and not for "keyword1" or "keyword2"), there's no way anyone who lost his good positions would have been able to change them back and achieve no. 1 again - so the effect on these people would have been the same as what has happened now...>>>
Lets just agree to disagree on this point. :) We all knew that Yahoo did what ever they wanted with your listing. They could change your submission completely to whatever they wanted. We were submitting in the hope of being included. We all know that there is never any guarantee of rank. You could rank high one day and someone could submit 100 sites the next and cause yu to be ranked low the next! Now the small guy has no chance of being # 1. Big money will win because they will spend their money optimising for Google (who controls more then 75% of the market) and will be ranked # 1
Enterprising entrepreneurs will always figure a way to be successful in competitive market.
One day i decide to upgrade to a new phone, and her boyfriend's number that was programmed into my old phone is no longer there. She howls with dismay when she finds she cant use the phone in the normal efficient way.Am I at fault for creating an assumption?
If she paid you $299 then yes. Its called an implied promise and reading about it will give you a better idea of Yahoo!'s substantial liability here. I believe they are well aware of this and aren't worried because they're not done yet.
Just though of a positive thing..
We can now run a WPG reporter mission against Yahoo get all of our placements without fear of a penalty from the almighty Google.
If that was a possibility before you wrote this it now probably no longer exists.
And your ONE little site has just as good of a chance at being listed #1 in Google as any or all of Mr. Deep Pocket's 40 sites, if your CONTENT is good enough.
And if your content is NOT good enough, why would you expect to be listed #1 ahead of better sites?
Yes that is true but now your Yahoo results = Google results
Not exactly. Yahoo does not have indented results and the default is 20 results per page. Therefore, Google can have 5 domains per default page whereas Yahoogle will have twenty results per page. A site which is at number 20 on Yahoo!, under the fold but on page 1 could conceivably come in at 39 on Google, way down the fourth page.
This is a worse case scenario, but there will always be some of this effect. mysite.com moves from 22 on Google up to 15 on Yahoo! because of this for an important keyword phrase.
This of course all depends on whether or not the default setting is 20 per page. Thats what mine is set at and I can't find anywhere to change it or check if that is default.
And if your content is NOT good enough, why would you expect to be listed #1 ahead of better sites?>>>
No one said you should expect to be # 1 if content isn't good enough. But Mr Small guy doesn't have the financial wherewithawl to spend the Thousands of dollars it will take to optimize for Google! Nor does he have the time or knowledge to do it own his own! Wake up and face the facts, Money talks!
I sit here at my cheesy little $2 computer and write content about the vacation destination where I live, and guess whose site is #1 for a search on Google and Yahoo and ALLtheWEB and AOL for "******* hotels?"
That's #1 out of 1,000,000+ sites.
It's done with no ad budget; no staff; and not a whole lot of intelligence on my part. That's as "small" as it gets.
And if a dork like me can do it...so can anyone else.
Nor does he have the time or knowledge to do it own his own! Wake up and face the facts, Money talks!
C'mon, I'm a "Mr. Small Guy" one of those week-end hacks or "muppets" as you all like to refer to us as and my cheesy little commercial site ranks #1 for my main kw phrases and for the most competitive kw phrase (3,000,000 results) my site ranks #2.
And don't tell me that I'm not the average muppet.
Obviously you have nothing better to do then sit around and work on your site.
I work close to 60hrs a week in my primary business.
Obviously you have nothing better to do then sit around and work on your site
So the guy that doesn't spend alot of his time working his site deserves to be #1? C'mon, your argument is just not making sense. If somebody takes the time to build a great site that others feel worthy of linking to, then they deserve to be ranked. That thakes time and commitment.
I work a full-time day job that takes me out of town 3 days every week. (If I can do it --you can do it.)
>>I can also bet you you will be singing a different tune when the Big Boys realize all they have to do is spend their money optimizing for Google!<<
The site listed in the #2 position behind me has an ad budget that allows them to be #1 on every PPC you can name for every travel destination you've ever heard of, and so many inbound links that trying to check it would cause Google to lock-up. And 8-10 months out of the year I'm ranked ahead of them.
And if I can do it --you can do it.
You got a good point but it's really not that hard to get a good ranking in google. Google's algo is pretty simple to figure out.
The hard part is raising your PR enough to get your optomized page up with your competition. But there are ways to raise your PR faster than the "normal" trading links. Of course I can't tell all my secrets but there are many ways of getting people to link to you.
I am also a little one man operation just like jk3210. And I have top 10's for thousands of keywords on google.
All you got to do is optomize your page for google and raise your PR by getting people to link to your page with your best keyword in the anchor text.
I have come up with an automated cgi script that get's people to link to my home page from their home page nearly every time which speeds up the process of getting a higher PR from many high PR home pages.
If you can come up with a way to get many people to link to you from their home page then you'll be #1 in no time at all!
It's simple stuff.
Since the main advice is to build a site with good content that people want to link to then surely the Internet will improve because Google dominates rather than the Yahoo directory.
The reality is that the changes at Yahoo have been great for some (both big and small) and terrible for others. Those that lost traffic will hate it and those who gained traffic will love it. And the general Y! user won't really notice or care either way.
Such is the world of SEO. One persons success always comes at the expense of someone else. Afterall, there are only 10 spots on the first page.
In the big picture, I do not think the sky is falling on the little guy. I've simply been through far too many weeks like this through the 6+ years I've spent squeezing a living out of the World Wide Web to believe that we are all doomed.
Situations change rapidly and opportunities come and go. Those that learn to adapt quickly will survive and those that don't won't. It doesn't really matter whether you are a VC funded dotcom or a stay-at-home Mom working part-time from a spare bedroom. The basic principle is the same.
There will be more to this story in the near future. Y! wouldn't have negotiated the nonexclusive portion of the deal if this was their idea of the final product.
So at this point, since this thread has pretty much run its course, I think it would be best to put this thread to bed. That way everyone can rest up and get ready for round 2.:)
