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In the top 10 of the serps was Yahoo's own listing.
"<Attraction Name> <City> at Yahoo Travel"
<Attraction Name> and other <City> entertainment in the Yahoo Travel Directory.
When I clicked the link I was redirected to the main Yahoo travel page where I could, of course, book travel to this particular city.
I was curious and went back to the serps. No cached page. Couldn't believe that Yahoo would spam their own engine in such a way and clicked the link again. Same thing.
How can any Webmaster compete in an environment like this? How can Yahoo be trusted anymore?
It totally undermines their credibility!
Not a good move.
20% of my SE referrals still come from Yahoo! so I don't really worry about it for now.
I have a job in addition to taking part in this forum remember.
Yes!
have fun!
DaveN
Really do you think that though before people bashed google, now they shouldnīt bash yahoo.......?
If something is wrong itīs just wrong and should be criticized independing if the bad before was other or the same bad one,.... supose people will keep on bashing google when google do something bad.
Remember some sites are already kicked out, since long ago, or better said ever was included....
it was the same for GG ... usally it's one of two reasons why these guys aren't posting.
1) they post they get attacked... yer sure I would hang around too
2) they are try to fix or change algo, filters...
All I'm saying is personal attacks will only drive the good guys away..
DaveN
but i do think comments re: Yahoo serps good or bad are OK and should be accepted
some may be doing very well in Yahoo serps others are not even in the database
Others feel Yahoo serps are to commercial and as they add more prominence to their own properties i.e. travel , Auto , Property , Shopping , Finance etc. and others to come plus PPC from Overture / Sitematch and will leave only the crumbs for webmasters now and in the future unless they have large PPC budgets,
Only time will tell if Yahoo continue to match searchers to their searches , if search results go lower and lower below the fold and searchers become more and more weary of the advertising I suspect Sitematch will come into its own as poor old joe public will not even realise that supposed free search results contain hidden PPC results disguised as free results
I think personally that the free serps are some of the best in the industry and can understand Yahoo trying to moneterise visitors as best they can , but wonder if there is a point where searchers themselves may feel they are not happy that whatever search query they enter the same 20 sites are presented.
steve
PS When looking for a hotel in? i tried the Yahoo Travel section and found it uncompetitive in actual pricing using real dates
Blaze,
I find the comment about Google not competing with their customers humorous for obvious reasons. Obviously a narrowsighted observation meaning they are not competing with you individually.
BTW Noone has sent me the example that was originally referred to in this post.
maybe this thread should be closed
I stickied you the query from my first post.
However, now the title and snippet have changed and the page no longer is a redirect. Someone changed it.
As for Google competing against webmasters...
When did Google begin booking travel, selling cars etc? When a webmaster sees their site gone from your serps and knows that Yahoo makes considerable income competing in that same niche can you blame that webmaster for questioning Yahoo!'s motives?
Yahoo has veered from enforcing spam guidelines to deciding which sites are of 'value' to their visitors. Furthermore these subjective decisions appear to be influenced by a profit motive by quietly removing competition while boosting the prominence of Yahoos own properties. All the while the poor simple Yahoo user doesn't know that his choices have been censored by the Yahoo Gods.
Seems to me that if these competing sites really give such a poor user experience that Yahoo would be better off including them. If Yahoo believes that the sites are so awful as to be of no use to their users that Yahoo's travel, auto, shopping sites would shine in comparison.
Unfortunately we webmasters know that's not true.
Don't misunderstand me Yahoo like all companies should and must make sure they make as much profit as possible from visitors / customers , but I think that it is possible that Yahoo may alienate people searching over the longer term if they allow advertising to overshadow what the searcher comes for ( AND THAT IS TO SEARCH THE INTERNET ) ,
I will give you an example
Say a site wishes to be included in Yahoo all about Widget disease ( sure lots of webmasters here suffer from that ) and when Yahoo editor looks at site he / she realises it may take the surfer some 2 - 3 minutes to actually find what he thought he went to the site for i.e. widget disease because the advertising makes the site appear to be all about affiliate programmes selling disease ( not just widget disease medicines )
Would the editors include site of exclude site , I believe it would be up to personal judgement some may allow site to be added some may not.
I think advertising affects different people in different ways and that if the serps page is too dominated by other Yahoo properties or PPC advertising , they may not even realise that underneath advertising the actual results that are presented to them are some great results that are possibly the cleanest around
I am sure many will disagree with me , but I believe the reason Google rose to such domanence over such a short period was that searchers liked to see their search query results displayed without having to move their mouse apart from onto the link that would take them to where they wished to visit
I would not expect you to comment on my comments and I am not trying to bash Yahoo only to wonder if the pursuit of profits could taint the user experience and may backfire
Mind you I also must admit I am just a webmaster running a small site that does not have the success or worldwide profile of Yahoo
So it is very possible and highly likely that I know nothing about business or Searchers
steve
As for Google competing against webmasters...
Run an Ecommerce?
Froogle
Run a Forum?
Google Groups
orkut
Have a news site?
Google News
Have an advertising based site?
Google is approaching advertisers and making deals.
Unfortunately, Google can't deliver the kind of exposure that Yahoo can, so large accounts like Dreamworks [businessweek.com] will keep being won by Yahoo.
I agree with DaveN that the grass is never green enough for some people, and I would respectfully add that the problems aren't neccessarily the fault of Google or Yahoo. There's an undertone of entitlement in some of these complaints. Sorry, no one is entitled to anything.
In fact, I'm pretty sure Yahoo would just love to follow Google and drop everything except search, email and a couple of other high traffic / customer sticky things.
AdSense in email? If Yahoo isn't working on their own version, then Semel needs to be replaced. According to Alexa, 39% of Yahoo's traffic is in email - imagine how you could monetize that!
Truly, even Amazon is starting to realize there is no money in being a destination. The ROI on the amazon stores is far better than that of trying to send books via snail mail. Why do you think they started up A9? They see the future.
Anyones knows being core is far more important than being edge.
And to get completely off topic, in the end it's going to be MSN versus Yahoo versus Google versus Amazon versus Ebay/Payapl
Just wait until Google does GPay. Then you'll seem some sparks fly!
[edited by: blaze at 4:37 pm (utc) on April 16, 2004]
Lets face it, Google is kicking butt. If they could just get Gmail going rapidly then they'll be very very competitive.
The directory, which was Y's primary service (I used it a lot when it started) is neglected, and it seems that few users refer to it, as far as I can tell from the logs of several sites which are listed in Y dir.
A month ago, I submitted some feedback about an incorrect listing of an ISP site which was #1 in the "Most Popular" group of sites in the lodging cat (out of 100s of sites in that category). it's like looking in Y dir for accomodation in NY city and the #1 site suggested is Verizon.
This just discourages the visitor to look any further, as the junk in SERPs does.
The Y SE is ofcourse still widely used, apparently by as much as 20%-25% (hard to say, because it's sector specific).
But the arbitrary Y SE penalties apparently have hurt many legitimate sites, while leaving enough (most? all?) junk sites to dominate the SERPs.
is it so difficult for Y to do some checking e.g. that a site is a) in some "authoritative" human-edited dir like its own or Dmoz b) the site has existed for over e.g. 6mo c) has a minimum content of e.g. 10 pages or more d) some min pagerank etc?
I've found Google better in that regard, but the situation for competitive keywords e.g. the TRAVEL industry (ie those having over 500k / 1m pages in SERPs) is just terrible for both Y and G. In a sense, I am glad I'm not trying to GET USEFUL DATA from those SERPs, because I know I could spend days in the labyrinth.
And btw I really wanted to ask this question (and I'm not sure which WW forum to ask it in): Do the people who create "spam sites" (I define them as sites SEOed, with only purpose to drive the visitor to some "real" site which usually is also of poor quality / content) make any money?
I mean, such spam sites in the top10 SERPs do get LOTS of traffic (so it probably costs them $$$ to run those sites), no doubt about it. But who BUYS products/services from such sites?
What's the conversion rate? 0.01% or even less?
The free ride is coming to an end (actually, it ended around 6 months ago, if not longer) and everybody who has placed their eggs in one basket is going to feel it badly.
From Yahoo's Search's Tools and Services Page:
Web Search
The most relevant results from across the Web.
I think we are entitled to the most relevant search results (for free).
I think we are entitled to the most relevant search results (for free).
You're entitled to nothing from them. They could charge you for them, make them all PPC or shut their search business down if they want. It simply has very little to do with anybody who doesn't own shares/have invested in/or works there.
Its simply not true that a private company can operate in any manner it wants and is not responsible for the actions of its services.
You're right. But it isn't as if they're selling baby food with nails in it - they're promoting their own products on their own pages. How would you feel if people emailed your site saying that you were evil for promoting your own products on your own pages?
You're entitled to nothing from them. They could charge you for them, make them all PPC or shut their search business down if they want. It simply has very little to do with anybody who doesn't own shares/have invested in/or works there.
Suppose there is a circus claiming to present the world's tallest humans to its audiences. I am a 12 feet tall human living near Amazon. I haven't seen anybody as tall as I am. I approach the circus company and am told that they know about my existence but unless I pay $1000 to them they are not interested in me. Moreover, while doing its show they present the midget in my village who is only 9 feet tall but paid that fee, as the tallest person in the world.
First of all, regardless of the company's obligations towards its owners and what not, it has the obligation to include me since I qualify, and second it has the obligation to inform its audiences, who would have thought that the midget is the tallest without full knowledge of facts, about this little arrangement of theirs.
it has the obligation to include me since I qualify, and second it has the obligation to inform its audiences
Think about what you are saying here: This would effectively mean that if you are a travel site and I'm a travel site - I could argue that my products should be on your site because it qualifies and you have an obligation to inform your audience. Can you see where this is going?
Think about what you are saying here: This would effectively mean that if you are a travel site and I'm a travel site - I could argue that my products should be on your site because it qualifies and you have an obligation to inform your audience. Can you see where this is going?
Sorry, but yahoo says: search the web,
I do NOT think a travel site would say search travel on the web......
they would say search travel on this site........
thats a big diference
