Yahoo Updates Site Guidelines

[Brett_Tabke]

Freshly Updated:

[help.yahoo.com...]

Not entirely sure what has changed, but it's all fairly generic and common sense stuff they have been using since Inktomi days...

[ogletree]

I'm glad G don't care about that stuff.

[notsosmart]

I wish that they did. Not that it matters to me. ;-)

[diamondgrl]

ogletree, which one of those rules do you think is a problem. they all seem perfectly reasonable to me.

[ownerrim]

LOL

[ownerrim]

...yahoo really expects people to believe that dumpload of hooey after sitematch. get me a doctor, I just can't stop laughing.

[notredamekid]

the one that says design a site for "visitors".

What is a "visitor"? Do they mean "spider"?

:)

[outland88]

They've got about every site selling goods on the point below. Doesn't anybody selling something want to direct you to another page. The order page.

"Pages dedicated to directing the user to another page"

[edit_g]

Pages built primarily for the search engines

So no affiliate sites at all in Yahoo then...

[ogletree]

I know Y and G say basicly the same thing but Y seems to be serious about it. I break a lot of those rules and have nothing in Y but rock in G.

[JeremyL]

Sites with numerous, unnecessary virtual hostnames

Are they talking about subdomains?

[edit_g]

I break a lot of those rules and have nothing in Y but rock in G

I've seen this happen - but I've also seen breaking all the rules and doing well in both. This just leads me to believe that Yahoo is a bit more random than Google.

[PatrickDeese]

I think that there are sections of Yahoo that currently violate these guidelines.

[Red_Eagle]

Yahoo is just giving themselves something to point to when someone complains about getting banned. If you want to make money you'll just have to adapt.

[bppilot]

I agree that some people need to adapt to fit into these guidelines. However, I think that Yahoo also needs to adapt and improve communication when there are issues. Whensomeone has gotten banned such as my sites and hasn't broken any of these 'new' rules, or any of the 'old' rules for that matter, I think there needs to be communication and a reasonable method of solving these issues. Yahoo's guidelines state that they are looking for useful content, yet we offer 10x the amount of content as our nearest competitor and still get banned with no communication as to why or how to fix this. I know that companies go through growing pains and these things take time, but I would really like to see some more two way communication with webmasters who are genuinely interested in providing good content yet get caught in the crossfire and get banned.

BP

[Teknorat]

Pages using methods to artificially inflate search engine ranking

... Excuse me... Bwahahahaha!

[Go60Guy]

Pages designed primarily for humans...

By "primarily" do they mean animals are now coming on to the net secondarily?

[Kirby]

Spot on, bppilot!

I dont violate a single guideline, yet while top 3 in google for numerous queries, my main page is not in top 1000 for anything in Yahoo, including my unique title.

Several hundred pages that link to me are in the results, though.

[SlyOldDog]

It makes perfect sense to me. But making rules is easy. Enforcing them is something else :)

Some of those rules are too broad for an algorithm to accurately target.

[PhraSEOlogy]

Excuse me... Bwahahahaha!

I love yahoo too...

YAHOO!

Spammers beware - honest!

[MetropolisRobot]

This is the one we should be looking at IMO:

Hyperlinks intended to help people find interesting, related content, when applicable

Basically by optimising or trying to optimise your link strategies for Google etc, its likely that you will fall foul of Yahoo.

[buckworks]

Those could be good standards if Yahoo applied them with a consistent measure of justice, logic and simple common sense. But they don't.

No matter how good your "unique and original content of genuine value" is, it's vulnerable to capricious banning and you'll never know why.

It's interesting to note that "What Yahoo! Considers Unwanted" includes "Pages dedicated to directing the user to another page." That's ironic, coming from an entity whose entire reason for being is to direct users to other pages.

[merlin30]

"Pages in great quantity, automatically generated or of little value "

Well that's Kelkoo done for!

[1milehgh80210]

"Basically by optimising or trying to optimise your link strategies for Google etc, its likely that you will fall foul of Yahoo."

That's the one positive I see with yahoo. I'm sure the ones that rule the roost with google feel it's their god-given right to dominate yahoo serps also, but the surfing public does'nt need another google clone IMO.

[Dayo_UK]

Yes, I assume that a certain shopping engine beginning with K will be out of the index soon.

They break about 4 or 5 rules.

Oh wait a second - dont Yahoo own this certain shopping engine.

Any comments from Yahoo?

Bad news for themselves too:-

[search.yahoo.com...] (4,660,000 results!)

[mat]

Sites with numerous, unnecessary virtual hostnames

Are they talking about subdomains?

That's what I took that to mean.

[adfree]

ogletree: I know Y and G say basicly the same thing but Y seems to be serious about it. I break a lot of those rules and have nothing in Y but rock in G....

Same here, my cash cow directory, portal type sites run well anywhere but Y! Whereas my low commercial content sites are indexed and returned well there.

Y! seems to try some serious distinction to G, maybe as a balance to their own stuff ;-)

[internetheaven]

Good point Dayo, and there have been several other messages in this thread pointing out that Yahoo itself is in cotradiction of its own rules. But my site is in real danger:

Pages in great quantity, automatically generated

My site sells around 100,000 products and each has its own page with a short description and price generated from a database onto a template.

Pages dedicated to directing the user to another page

What, you mean like my sitemap? Or my main page? Or my in-site search engine? Or how about my articles on various products I don't sell with links to other sites where you can buy them? Or my product pages with links to Worldpay so people can pay me?

Pages using methods to artificially inflate search engine ranking

I 'artificially inflate' my rankings on search engines by adding alt tags, keyword density, meta tags, inbound links etc. So if we look like we've tried to make our site search engine friendly the big search engine spider will eat us? So this whole forum should be banned then as it lists ways to 'artificially inflate' rankings - yes?

Multiple sites offering the same content ....
... Pages that have substantially the same content as other pages ...

I sell many products that other people sell. So only ONE website can sell a certain product or give information about an organisation or give a tutorial on a subject? Well, I sure hope that one website will be me .....

Excessively cross-linking sites to inflate a site's apparent popularity ... Pages that use excessive pop-ups ... Sites with numerous, unnecessary virtual hostnames ... Pages built primarily for the search engines ... Pages that seem deceptive, fraudulent

And just who in Yahoo has the ability to discern all these things and perform such a task in an unbiased and experienced manner? This last one though was the best:

Pages that provide a poor user experience

Just who do Yahoo think they are?

[GlynMusica]

They've probably amended this because they are about to kick every page that isn't paid.

[mikeD]

The biggest joke is that Yahoo has bought Kelkoo.

The worst offender of all.

Does anyone believe Kelkoo will be subject to these rules? or anyone who pays to get in?

Very doubtful.

Yahoo doesn't really care about spam, if it pays them a few quid.