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A relatively new site is coming up in the Y SERP's recently - definitely a Y Inclusion customer (frequent updates). 1000+ page site. The issue is that the Title and text that show up in the Y's SERP's often do *not* match the actual page titles and text.
Example: A page is appearing at number 1 for a search on "best widgets from Mars". Y's listing for the page shows "Best Widgets from Mars" as the Title. That phrase is also shown again in the text of theY listing. BUT the actual page is only about "Widgets from Mars" and the word "Best" appears nowhere in the actual page at all; not in the Title, not in the META's, not in the text, not even in ALT's. Nowhere. FYI, "best widgets from Mars" is a common kw variation in the category...so an SEO'er would plan to capture that exact search phrase if possible.
Will/can Y's program show varied titles for a page in their SERP's when the titles for the page don't actually exist? That implies that endless variations of a page's title could be displayed in the SERP's to match different kw search phrases, which might help both ranking in the SERP's, and CT rates. Talk about spam.
The only other possibility I can see that would cause this is that the pages in question have been changed since the last fresh dates from two days ago...but we're talking about a lot of pages here (1000+).
I can deal with the normal Site Match program, but this xml feed stuff is paid cloaking pure and simple and how they think that they can get away with not tagging it as a sponsered listing is beyond my comprehension.
-s-
I would venture that at least in certain industries there are likely already requirements to identify paid advertisements as such.
Caveman, given Tim's reply, I dont think Yahoo looks at cloaking as inherently evil if the end product is still relevant results.
This whole "pfi is cloaking" argument is missing the point. For years webmasters and SEOs have cried out to Google for a clarification of the 'rules'. Many have posted that they would pay a customer service fee for the ability to determine what they should or shouldnt do. "Hey GG, is it ok if I do this?" or "How much crosslinking before I get nailed?"
Yahoo in essence is only delivering what many have asked for; seo review, but the service is royalty based as opposed to fee based. Warren Buffett would be proud.
Caveman
If you think something is negatively impacting the quality of the serps then please send the query and content to webmasterworldfeedback@yahoo.com. I would be very interested in evaluating this.
Tim, Sure, I will send something in for your review later today. In the meantime, I'm wondering if the precise wording of your question was important, because it almost justifies the problem I see.
You put it as a relevance issue, but *if* what I see is related to feeds, it is more a cloaking and fairness issue than a relevance issue, and it contradicts Y's assertion that feed customers get no advantage in the algo. They may not have an *algo* advantage, but they do enjoy a clear advantage in the *SERP's*...which is all that matters.
With Y, as with all SE's, even a subtle variation in the order of keywords brings up different orders of relevant pages, and at times can substantially alter what listings appear in the top 10. This holds true even wrt small conjunctions, etc. One nice thing about this (personal opinion) is that different sites have the chance to hit the top three spots in the SERP's, depending upon which precise kw's and order of kw's they prefer to focus on.
What I'm seeing, however, is that with this one site, no matter how you jumble the kw combinations for a search, their pages not only come up number one, but show titles that *do not even exist* on their actual pages - and *text that does not exist* on their actual pages. This strikes me as misleading.
If a page can rank #1 for precise kw combinations they do not even include on their page, just by virtue of participating in the feed program, then they absolutely have a clear advantage. It means that they can come to #1 for all the following searches:
-blue Martian widgets
-blue widgets from Mars
-blue Mars widgets
-blue Mars widget
-Martian blue widgets
-Martian blue widget
-Martian widgets that are blue
-Mars widgets blue
-Mars widget blue ... etc, etc, etc.
There is *no way* that a single page, without the help of cloaking, could come to #1 for all of those searches in Y. To achieve this, one needs to pay Y, and the result of that payment would be dominance in the SERP's.
The reason I noted the wording of your question is that one might argue that since the pages in question are relevant to all of those searches, that's "OK".
It would be OK (I guess), *if* Y did not assert that participating in the SiteMatch program gives no algo advantage ... and *if* the listings that achieve top rankings without even having the kw's or kw phrases on the page are noted as having achieved their rankings because they are paying to show up for kw combinations not even on the page.
IF this is what is going on, it's Y's choice. Fine with me. Just be honest about it and label those listings for what they are. In other words, if the SERP's are going to be for sale, tell us that, and we can all decide whether or not to be buyers. :-)
Caveman, given Tim's reply, I dont think Yahoo looks at cloaking as inherently evil if the end product is still relevant results.
Hey Kirby. IMO, that is the problem. Tell us that we are indeed paying for an advantage of placement, and I'll be fine. Tell us that participating in these programs offers no advantage with the also, and it's misleading. ;-)
This whole "pfi is cloaking" argument is missing the point. For years webmasters and SEOs have cried out to Google for a clarification of the 'rules'. Many have posted that they would pay a customer service fee for the ability to determine what they should or shouldnt do. "Hey GG, is it ok if I do this?" or "How much crosslinking before I get nailed?"Yahoo in essence is only delivering what many have asked for; seo review, but the service is royalty based as opposed to fee based. Warren Buffett would be proud.
I totally agree that there is merit to the SiteMatch program in principle, IF it does not give algo advantages and SERP's advantages, but simply provides for better service and frequent updates. For many that will be worth paying for.
I'll be curious how it's handled, since as noted, the page is relevant to the search, but because of the actual keywords used on the actual page, it would never show up well naturally. (The page doesn't use the kw phrase that it shows up #1 for in Y!; however, the Y listing shows that kw phrase as the page's title, when it's not ... i.e. there's cloaking going on.)
Relevant - but not fair - and not possible without cloaking and/or a feed. That would seem to fit into the category of "unfair advantage in the SERP's" as a result of participating in the feed program ...
How they do this is the key. How does customer service help a client to do better in the serps without giving away proprietary info? I dont think they can.
But the feeds are another matter. Coaching right from Y on how to do well? Feeds that don't even necessarily have to match page contents? That's far more dicey.
Inclusion has nothing to do with ranking. Ranking is based on 'relevancy'. This has been repeated over and over again.
Technically it could be correct.
However (The Yahoo Agenda...Hi Steve), if the feed has a 'hidden benefit' in which keywords are flexibly match (why it's called site-match) to the user query...
such as advertiser target keyword is 'blue widget' and this term is 'match' to ANY query that have blue widget in it...then...
in theory the serp would still be relevant, after all it's all about 'blue widget'.
BUT...
******
1. Why mislead webmasters to believing that their free and/or basic site match URLs have 'a chance' to come-up high in the serp as implied by Tim's statements?
Could it be a cover-up to FTC that in the surface they are running a fair algo based search engine, hiding the truth that 'only feed based advertisers' will ever get to the top and the rest are just there for appearance?
Could it be Yahoo's way to gather webmasters interest and support by dangling the proverbial carrot?
2. By giving this flexibility to advertisers feed does it not devalue the 'quality' of the serp by having the top results stuff with adverts as opposed to real contents?
Let's face it, paid URL and feeds are commercial by nature, very few have real contents.
******
Correct me if I'm wrong, isn't it that there's already a law in regards to label clearly adverts in the SEs?
Because if the paid URLs are dominating the result then Yahoo is clearly misleading users by giving the impression that they are going to site/s that 'Yahoo has no vested interest on it'.
By prioritizing the paid URLs in the serp then by default Yahoo has vested interest on those sites and has to be clearly marked.
I think this is a fertile ground for somebody in the legal community to look into.
Site Match Xchange™ for Large Advertisers
Site Match Xchange is available for large advertisers wanting to submit 1000+ Web pages for review. For these advertisers, we provide a dedicated account representative and an XML feed for Web pages. Send an e-mail to sitematchxchange@overture.com for personalized assistance.
______________________________________________
Today the statement below appeared on the same page.
Please note: All URLs must pass initial and ongoing quality review to be included. Participation in the program does not guarantee rank in search results; rank is determined by assessing site quality and relevance to search terms.
_______________________________________________
My question amoung many is - since an XML feed is data and doesn't have to be relevant to the page, and can be cloaked, how can the above statement even apply.
The data the page is ranking with isn't being fed from the page to begin with.
-s-
Please note: All URLs must pass initial and ongoing quality review to be included. Participation in the program does not guarantee rank in search results; rank is determined by assessing site quality and relevance to search terms.
quality review my @$$
#1 on a competitive keyword is a cloaked page which redirect to another site.
The cloaked page is pure garbage a technique used by spammers where they stuffed the page with nonsense paragraphs unfit for human consumption, 'not even close'.
If I could access the cloaked page don't tell me that the reviewer miss this one or was that considerd 'quality and relevant' URL?
Other quality sites...
search for 'information on widget' #1 is a page full of affiliates banner and no content.
What a lame search engine...all Yahoo care is about money...this SE won't last
How did I found out about this cloaked URL?
1. I checked my log and I got a referrer from search.yahoo
2. I went to check the Yahoo url.
3. my page is rank in the 100's
4. somebody going through a lot of serp just to end up in my site ;)
5. so I checked the 1st page
6. #1 is crap
7. followed by more garbage
If this person have used Google instead, s/he wouldn't have to go through a 100 listing to get a decent result.
I guess whoever that searcher is, is not coming back to search yahoo.
Please note: All URLs must pass initial and ongoing quality review to be included. Participation in the program does not guarantee rank in search results; rank is determined by assessing site quality and relevance to search terms.
_______________________________________________My question amoung many is - since an XML feed is data and doesn't have to be relevant to the page, and can be cloaked, how can the above statement even apply.
stcrim, my guess is that it's in the way they phrase it: "rank is determined by assessing the site quality and relevance to search terms."
In other words, the page being ranked doesn't have to even contain the search terms (I see this already) - it only has to be "relevant" to the search terms, and apparently only in the judgement of the Y employee who is looking at it, at any given point in time. Scary.
The result is that these pages will enjoy a clear and dramatic advantage over pages not in the feed. Y's algo - for the most part - simply will *not* rank pages highly without the literal use of the search words in the title and in the page.
Thus, the feed portion of this program is almost certainly very biased, bestowing advantages that even regular SiteMatch customers will not enjoy (non-feed customers). The more I look at this, the more distasteful I find it.
Tim, I sure am curious what y'all thought of the example I sent in...if a page can rank #1 in your SERP's without even having the kw string anywhere in the title or on the page, that will tell us a lot about how the system works.
I intentionally sent in a search result example that was relevant, but that would not score in the top five of the SERP's without some help from cloaking or kw matching behind the scenes.
I've done a lot more looking at it, and while this may not surprise many, it seems to be the case that Y's feed program is indeed little more than legalized cloaking.
What irks me the most is that participants in the feed program can have an apparent 'page title' appear in the SERP's, that keys off of the search phrase being used, but that is not the real page title. The result is that the searcher sees a bogus title designed to maximize CT as relates to the search term. It also seems possible that the bogus title plays a role in inflating the page's standing in the SERP's.
Y, please correct me if I'm wrong! We don't use the feed program so all we can do is research and draw conclusions.
If this isn't institutionalized SPAM, I don't know what is. So much for no advantage to the participants in the program.
<rant not yet over...just taking a break for now...>
I think one reason is because the whole Y! business model is so confusing that people don't seem to realize this aspect of it at all.
Keep ranting, maybe some people will wake up and start to realize why their sites can't achieve a top ranking.
....of course, that ain't gonna happen. ;-)
The "legalised cloaking" argument has been going on for the same length of time. Even Danny Sullivan refers to it as cloaking.
So - it's there, it works and customers love it.
However, the editorial tests are far more stringent than you may think! But you are right - the actual content of title tags, description etc may not appear on the page you are sent to. The page must be highly relevant to the search term though. In feed issues - relevancy is the key - not on page coding.
Yes, overture and adwords require relevancy too. They required pay per click. You bid on a word that is not contained on your site. Seems very similar to feeds.
My only problem with feeds is that they don't show as sponsered and anyone who looks at them knows that basically they are sponsered listings.
The issue for me is that with the feeds using titles and kw sets customized to specific kw searches, this has to almost necessarily help each feed listing perform better in the SERP's, versus static pages for which a webmaster must choose precisely *one* set of exact kw's to optimize for.
Which makes Y's assertion that participation in the program "does not affect a page's ranking in their SERP's" a baldfaced lie.
Does *anyone* disagree?
That said, I have less concern with Y's choice of doing it (although clearly it favors larger players) than I have with the fact that they keep lying about it. Call it what it is, and let people choose to pay to play...or not.
I may not like it because it favors big players, but at least calling it what it is would be accurate, not deceptive.
<Note to self: Need to get bigger faster. ;-) >
