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On the first page itself, #s3, 7, 9, 12 & 17 of the SERPS are all redirecting to [DOMAIN1.com...] Different URLs but all leading to the same page.
Also, #s 5 & 20 of the same SERPS lead to a different domain, with the same format as the one above:
[DOMAIN2.com...]
Highly likely that the two sites are related to each other.
Looking at the source codes of these 2 sites, there's no metatags
<META NAME="Keywords" CONTENT="">
<META NAME="Description" CONTENT="">
yet they have really long description composed of a bunch of keywords STRINGED together that is nowhere on their site. The descriptions in the YAHOO SERPS are not even a sentence, just keywords stringed together, some of which are totally unrelated to the topic of their site. Example of the description in the Yahoo SERPS is (punctuations are exactly as it is in the Y SERPS):
... [unrelated kw1] [unrelated kw2]. [main kw] [unrelated kw1]. [unrelated kw3]... [unrelated kw2] [unrelated kw1]. [unrelated kw1] [main kw]. [main kw] [unrelated kw4] ...
The above is a bunch of 4 unrelated keywords, with some repeated in the description.
Why are these spammy/trashy results dominating Yahoo SERPS? Is their algo that bad? Or are these sites up there dominating the results because they paid under their Site Match program?
I have sent a note to Yahoo re this result. But still the same for a couple of weeks now.
yahoo started out good. I think something may have gone wrong. for example:
I had good Yahoo rankings for site1 using keyword1,
AND now I still have good rankings for site1 using keyword1, BUT IT'S A DIFFERENT PAGE OF THE SITE THAT HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH THE KEYWORD?
Really strange stuff...
DaveN
Of course there are some SERP's that are spammy, but like daven said they are still rolling out the technology and improving it constantly.
Even in just the month the new database has been out I've been seeing continous improvements.
The first incarnation of the new Yahoo was much better. Sure, there were a couple of sites that should not be at the top but the results generally showed sites that are have been around in the industry for years. The latest version however showed crap.
I don't really mind if my site is not in the top 20, but I would want to see relevant sites in the results. Not only are the sites spammy, but they are actually not relevant to the keyword. The second domain I mentioned even has an adult theme, when the keyword is not even remotely close to any adult theme.
But how can you go up the ranks when the spammy ones are on top? Yet I don't see how their on-page optimization -- no metatags, etc. -- compares with mine. They only have 25 pages in Y as against my site's 3,809 pages. When you try to compare links, this site has zilch links (checked with Y, even in G)
I don't really worry much about SEO as the site has done pretty well with our keywords. It just gets frustrating when you see sites that shouldn't be there up ahead of you because the algo of the SE is flawed.
Also, I think it's important to remove focus on complaints or whether Yahoo is spammy or not and place that focus on how to improve you sites in their SERP's.
I suppose the obvious answer to that is: follow the lead of the spammy sites and fill your site with lots of crap. :)
My question now is: did the spammy sites get there because of problems with Y's algo, or is it because they paid to be in there?
because under "normal" optimization, this site -- with 0 links, 0 pagerank, 25 pages in Y & 3 pages in G, 4 month old site -- should NOT get the #3, 7, 9, 12 & 17 spots. so unless they paid their way in, they shouldn't be there.
Also, I think it's important to remove focus on complaints or whether Yahoo is spammy or not and place that focus on how to improve you sites in their SERP's.
Hmmmm.... In my opinion, non-relevant or spammy SE results actually hurt the whole Web, because they undermine the users' trust in the SEs.
I would hope that Yahoo fixes what I (and probably others) view as irrelevant results in some categories. I would like them to be a player in the SE arena in the following years, esp. in view of MS activity...
I also find it re-assuring that Yahoo has established these channels of communication with Webmasters like the webmasterworldgfeedback email, to get feedback about issues.
And they do respond (took about a week in my case) Did it solve "my problem"? No, it didn't, yet at least.
But I'm sure Yahoo themselves want these problems fixed asap, because irrelevant results hurt them as much as it hurts legit webmasters, so I'm going to wait.
But I also understand the anxiety of many webmasters here, who rely on SERPs as a major source of daily traffic.
My question now is: did the spammy sites get there because of problems with Y's algo, or is it because they paid to be in there?
I'm pretty sure there is a glitch in Y algorithm.
For the category I've spent a lot of time "re-searching" (ie TRAVEL) it seems as if # and "quality" of backlinks (a la Google's PR) play NO ROLE in Y' SERPs.
No way the sites in the results would have paid their way in those SERPs, because there were just too many sites that were included as if by "accident" (imo), ie empty pages, no content etc.
And as we are currently seeing a glitch in the algo -- how can we be sure that Site Match sites who would never be at the top if the algo is in tip-top shape not getting the top spots right now?
Yeah, I know. It takes time to clean up the algo. In the meantime, this is the result you get from Y.
Pathetic.
DaveN
Dave, I sent you a sticky re the keyword I was looking at. You'll see how ABSOLUTELY RUBBISH the results of Y are compared to G.
I'm sure Yahoo SERP quality control staff would appreciate this kind of "human feedback" also. Send them a copy.
There is only so much you can do with computer tracking of SERPs and users' selections.
Any idea why a site would appear across the entire Yahoo network (alltheweb, lycos, msn, etc), but not in Altavista?
Thanks
I agree! I have started using Yahoo more because I can't find anything I'm searching for at Google.
I might use Yahoo, but since I view in 600x800 and all you can see is paid results, I don't like to scroll so I don't use Yahoo.
Google results are just fine for me.
I just did a search on yahoo for "domain.com" (where domain is something else) . The results were EXACTLY the same as Google's results. In other words, Yahoo appears to still be using Google's information. Has anybody else seen other examples of this?
Not in my experience. Yahoo and Google SERPs differ quite a lot, depending on subject.
The last few weeks I've tried to DIRECTLY compare SERPs from a user's perspective, as objectively as possible, taking the time to submit THE SAME QUERY to both. I do many (~30-50) searches everyday on many different topics and spend hours, e.g. today on source of full-text of a novel by Mark Twain in electronic form (rather than buy a book), on spam fighting software for Unix servers, email sanitizer, articles and feedback SMTP email sender authentication proposals and implementations, travel stuff blah blah
I would classify quality of SERP reslts in 3 areas of the Web:
1/ In areas without DELIBERATE SPAM and NOISE at all, e.g. when looking for the fulltext of the novel by Mark Twain, Y and G produced similar results. Found immediately what I wanted, GREAT!
2/ For areas without SPAM but with NOISE (e.g. the "authoritative" sites or pages for some sw or technology vs some post in a mailing list archive that could be remotely relevant) Yahoo SERPs when searching for 3-6 words at once included quite a bit of "noise", e.g. about 1/3 of the sites in SERPs were links to files of list archives of 150KB-600KB (!) in size. (e.g. searching for "procmail recipe filter virus double extension" )
3/ In Areas with SPAM and NOISE e.g. travel info (I don't search much on any "mainstream" stuff, I just search on travel regularly for "benchmarking") imo Yahoo needs to enable some PageRank-type filtering mechanism. About half the sites in the SERPs top40 for my country (Greece) seem to have landed there by accident.
On the bright side, I like Yahoo's longer snippets in SERPs, I find Y snippets a bit more helpful and I like that now they both highlight keywords in SERPs.
