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How can I combat this???
Two words.
"Kill file."
Treat them like humans. After all, some of them are.
But, mostly, they really, really don't want to hear about people who don't like their site's description -- i.e. all the spammers and the world along with the rest of us. Getting something like this changed will probably take a personal acquaintance with someone who works there.
hutcheson
(whose own Yahoo description consists of a portion of alphabar menu from the home page: :( and bearing it.)
The best solution for you, in my opinion, would be to register a keyword rich URL, copy your site over, and submit this one to Yahoo with the appropriate title and description using Bizex.
If you have other domains already with a good title, you could also try submitting those.
The thought occurs to me that there's a whole other issue being brought up. If a tree is bad, and bearing bad fruit, then the cause is somewhere to be found in the roots.
The conclusion I come to is that who, within a company, does the SEO and directory submissions is a very important decision to be made, not one to be taken lightly.
This is no longer a Yahoo discussion, but a discussion of management policy, which imho, is off-topic for this Yahoo forum.
Assigning functions within a company amounts to delegating responsibility. Either the paid employee, contractor, or intern, whether paid or not, will either have the prerogative to act on behalf of the company independently, or they will have to first get the approval of a superior to take any significant action.
If a 17-year old intern made the submission without authorization, in violation of company policy, it is one thing. If he was authorized to act independently, he did nothing more than doing the best job he knew how. After all, he was an intern, not an experienced SEO.
If, indeed, he was delegated the authority to make the submission without any additional approval or edits by a superior, then it's the company's management policy that will need to be re-examined. The company in question, not Yahoo.
A business plan or organizational model is never static, but needs to be dynamic and evolve over time for maximum productivity and effectiveness.
There was clearly a choice made, that of engaging the services of an intern rather than a professional SEO. If that has not been proven to have been an effective choice, then it's time for that particular company to re-assess its own policies - not Yahoo's.
In the case of someone else submitting for a company, that's a different story. The submit_a_site facility is out in the open, for all to use. It seems Yahoo would almost have to require digital signatures to totally control that.
Edited by: Marcia
I feel your pain.
In fact, I think we all feel your pain. It is incredibly frustrating to work with Yahoo, once your site is in with a poor description, and just getting into Yahoo at all.
Yahoo is big enough you can't just ignore them. We've all been there and we are all battle weary.
>register a keyword rich URL, copy your site over, and >submit this one to Yahoo with the appropriate title and >description using Bizex.
I think that is one of the best pieces of advice I have heard to combat this problem, and I am sort of mad at myself I didn't think of it first.
I have also heard the best way to submit your url is to print off the submission guidelines and follow them exactly..like a checklist.
Another great of advice I heard was "Write a killer description"..because as we have all learned, once you do get your site listed in Yahoo, you probably won't be able to change the description.
Go over and over and over your site description. Write it one day, put it aside and look at it again the second day. Write it several ways with different keywords. Perfect it.
And make sure that category is the correct one. Spend a day just searching Yahoo on your strongest keywords and keep a spreadsheet on the most popular cats...those are the ones you want to shoot for.
Remember what I said about about using the submit page as a checklist? Well, there is a place there that asks "Are there any other categories you believe this site should go it." Of course, the answer is a big YES. List your first one as a locality, if possible. (That's usually a sure win.) Put others if you believe they are appropiate.
Good luck! Let us know if the separate url with your web site on it works.
-G
I remember the old days of the Internet and the non-businesslike attitudes we all had back then. I mean even before Mosaic when any commercial Usenet posting was flamed. There is something about those old days lingering in the mind of anyone who thinks that Yahoo's old "utopian" policy of giving free, arbitrary and unchangeable listings to any unauthorized or authorized person regardless of budget or site quality is workable, fair or relevant to attaining good search results.
Does your sites title accurately represent the real company's name? (your only chance is if your mis represented)
Blossoms -
I think it would be ridiculous for Yahoo to offer unlimited title/description changes for money. That's like begging people to come manipulate the search results.
It's Yahoo policy to list the company's name, so it doesn't matter who submits the site, Yahoo still going to use what they perceive to be the company's real name. I've actually seen example were people tried to manipulate the site by using a keyword rich fake company name (both in the submission form and on the site) and Yahoo used the company name from the whois information instead.
The description is not much different. No matter how beautiful the description you write is, Yahoo still has the option (and usually practices it) to change the description to whatever they want.
The bottom line, the majority of Yahoo's revenue isn't from express submissions, it's from advertising. So if you refuse to do an express submission you're not hurting yahoo, your hurting your own pocketbook (it's almost impossible to not earn your $199 back over time if you sell a quality product).
