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The SERPs on Yahoo (web/google results) are changing depending on the number of results displayed per page.
I've only seen this on one search phrase, but it could be effecting more.
I can't understand this at all. I've checked the 10 Google datacenters (that I know of), plus Ink', AV and FAST, and nothing looks like this.
The weird SERP is only occuring on "20 results per page", which I believe is the default. If you set it to anything else, you get the normal SERP.
Very, very strange indeed.
Anyone know what's going on?
Strange....
Will post if I get a response.
Interestingly, over the weekend the site that usally appears at no. 2 in Google for this SERP now appears at 9 in Yahoo - previously nowhere to be seen.
Possibly a reaction to my mail - but I doubt it.
As far as I can tell Yahoo puts less weight on backlink anchor text and more weight on sites listed in the "appropriate", as it sees it, category of the Y! directory.
I like the Y! serps better than the G serps, but I still think the INK serps are better than both.....so come on Y! flip that dang switch already!
search for "widgets" with 50 results per page
www.widgets-r-us.com is #1 (same as Google)
(example URLS!)
Now this doesn't make sense, why should the *number* of results per page affect the listings that are shown?
Also, for all the SERPs I have checked it is only this one that comes up different to Google!
I see this for almost every "common" search term I try.
Try some one word terms like God, Hotels, Cars...etc. With 100 results displayed you should see clean Google, try it on 20 results and you should see the Yahoo "filtered" version.
By comparing the differences you can begin to see what the Y! filters on the 20 results version are doing.
My guess is that most people leave the default at 20 per page....so this is pretty important for those targeting very common search terms. Once you get into less common 3 or 4 keyword terms Yahoo doesn't seem to filter regardless of the number of results displayed.
On one phrase I follow I am in the top 4 for every major s/e. (ink, Google, fast).
I clearly do not follow it well enough, because I have only just spotted on Yahoo UK I am 10+ Yuk!
I do better on the directory listings than on the web listing. (So not directory weighting) Also, The top 6 are otherwise identical to google, only this one site dropped down. So what can it be?
It is not the domain extension, (trust me) and when I look on UK only listings it is possibly even worse.
Being beaten by sites that cannot spell "dicount" :),(better watch my spelling now) and two separate listings from the same site, one at 7 and another at 17. (same domain, different sub domains).
One relief is that these results cannot last, but it would be nice to know what is happening.
