Yahoo Changes

[phpdude]

Wow!

Did Yahoo recently change something? The results today are totally out of wack. Not a relevant result for anything I search on!

[ksg926]

I agree. I noticed our listings disappeared from MSN on the 18th of August, then disaster struck at Yahoo! on the 19th. Seems odd that all this seems to correspond to Google's IPO and start of trading.

Any other thoughts on what this means? Is this a temporary change or does it seem like something more?
The results seem too spammy to be reliable or to be accepted even by average search engine users.

Is this an attempt to generate more ad revenue from Overture by shuffling the deck whenever they need an infusion of cash?

[ThePhoenix]

KSG-

What kind of disaster struck on Yahoo for you?

-The Phoenix

[willybfriendly]

Did y'all see this thread?

[webmasterworld.com...]

WBF

[ksg926]

Yes WillyB I saw the post yesterday. Makes me wonder what's going on.

Phoenix - I am almost positive that my listings in Yahoo! were coming from my Inktomi listing through PositionTech. I was ranked #2 and 4 for several important search terms and at #3 and 5 for the same at MSN. How will Ink be able to honor the full term of our listings? I guess since we do not have a contract with MSN and Yahoo directly, then Ink can say it will honor the contract but doing so is beyond their control at certain engines.

Totally confused and scrambling for answers...

[phpdude]

I'm seeing not a single site that is in their directory anywhere near the top 20. These are authority sites that have been around a long time.

They have been replaced by sites that are not even close in quality.

If this is the new Yahoo, boy did they screw the pooch on this one!

[Liane]

I'm not seeing a lot of changes (good or bad) in my sector. They are still slow as heck in picking up new pages.

The only relatively "big news" is that they've gone from showing the top 20 results to top 10 only.

[willybfriendly]

Well, hey...I am still seeing 20 results.

Maybe Y has truly figured a way to deliver individualized SERP's. Just serv up a random page to every request. :)

[phpdude]

--Just serv up a random page to every request.--

LOL > Looks like their trying to think of more ways to get you to buy into that stupid site match program. Problem is, that don't guarantee you anything other than your going to be paying Yahoo money.

Kind of one sided if you ask me.

Good thing they didn't deliver a lot of traffic to me when I was ranking high, because I won't miss it. It won't take long for people to start searching elsewhere with results like those. At least in the area I'm interested in.

The only results that are any good are the paid results. Hmmmm, imagine that.............

[phpdude]

Well,

This is interesting! When using Firefox, the SERPs look good, all the authority sites are there.

When using Explorer, they look pretty bad.

I ran the usual spybot programs with no effect.

Is there a new spybot about that anybody has heard about that would do this?

<UPDATE> Well, I cleard the cookies and low and behold the results were good again. There is a strange cookie about that is causing results to have huge difference. That is probably why some people are seeing it and others are not.

[guang]

same problem here.
works fine in Opera but not in IE.

Thanks for the cookie tip phpdude. Now my IE works fine.

[vbjaeger]

Did anybody else see a whole new appearance to the Yahoo search as well? It totally looked like a Google search with completely different results.

The results were not numbered and the sponsor listings looked completely different. I will say the search results looked much better as website titles were showing again instead of the page titles.

[sit2510]

>>> Did anybody else see a whole new appearance to the Yahoo search as well?

I see only 10 results now instead of 20. The results are with number and I can't see any sponsored listing, except that provided by Yahoo network.