Yahoo Update?

Sep. 21, 2005

[sugarrae]

Been seeing various changes across a lot of serps.

[patc]

It's pretty mad. I'm seeing at least 3 different sets of results depending on which computer I use. My site has also disappeared, some DCs have 1 page index, some 4, some 2.... it was just recovering after a recent unbanning (it was banned for no apparent reason it seems)

Some SERPS are showing no more than 5% of the number of results than they used to (i.e. 3,000,000 instead of 70,000,000), so I'm with the general consensus here which is that it can't be over.

I hope not anyway!

[vbjaeger]

I just checked and Yahoo seems seriously screwed up at the moment. The results are unlike any I have ever seen. You can change the entire results simply by changing a letter in the search to a capitol letter. For instance, if you are looking for Widget Management you get one set of results than if you search for widget management. You will also get a completely different set now for Widget management compared to widget Management. The results themselves are all pointing to distant subpages.

I hope this isn't their idea of good results...

[weeks]

This isn't spam, it's just bad search-these people don't want to be this high on these "town state" search results. Yahoo has always been the best for us, putting us where we rightfully deserved to be.

I hope this is temporary.

(Still, we're higher than our lame competition.)

[mikey158]

Seriously though.. I can not wait until this one shakes out... ususally a day or two.

Just like daytrading ... at the end, only one of three things will happen .. your SERP goes up, your SERP stays the same, or your SERP goes down.

[patc]

mikey,

Wish I could be so optimistic about it - none of the 'new' SERPS has my site in pretty much at all. In past experience, one or two of these new datasets seem to settle into the several months of Y!'s index...

[sugarrae]

What I'm currently seeing (which cannot be permanent, unless the goal is SE Suicide) is horrid. Completely irrelevant results, the same clean/semi clean site pulling 4-6 of the top ten slots for a term, a certain type of spam ranking HARD for every term it is aiming at, huge dips in "site:" searches for legit sites that have been around for years... I'm seeing less "old school spam" but the results in it's place, while semi clean looking - are irrelevant as hell. (And, personal ranks have nothing to do with my opinions - some rise, some fall - usual in an update.)

Huge number of .org, .gov and .edu sites ranking for a term because they have a mild relevance to the search term and don't give me what I want.

I'm not even looking at it anymore - because if this sticks, Yahoo won't have much of a search population after long anyway to aim at. I'm cutting you guys some slack because you probably still have more update coming... least I sure hope so.

[mosxu]

Right,

Maybe Yahoo is implementing the mindset [mindset.research.yahoo.com...] showing more research results rather than shopping or maybe they trying to do something like Florida update. Anyway I think the current results are ridiculous.

[thetrasher]

strange update...
my three little old personal sites were on #1, now they are ?where?

site:www.example.com for my application site shows only one result: www.example.com/css.css

maybe yahoo switches to a css-se? lol!

[mikey158]

I hardly think this over. I think we are seeing the beginnings or the middle of the update.

I dont want to speculate oh how their index is built/rebuilt/distributed - but I would imagine that it is an iterative process which takes time to complete.

If this were to be the final results, Yahoo itself would loose considerable marketshare quickly. The index would have shrunk as well to a fraction of its real size. Just hang loose we are only a few hours into this. Pray a little too!

[newwebster]

Dear God!

We should call this update Katrina Rita

How much devistation can on SE create?

[rossendryv]

the results are still changing infact in last 30 minites it changes twice. Probably the best thing is to wait a day or so and come back and check

[kamikaze Optimizer]

Don't freak out. This is how Yahoo brings in updates. You get completely different results depending on a number of factors, one main one is being loged in to Yahoo, one other is just having a Yahoo member cookie.

But again, these are not the final results.
Having watched Yahoo updates for a while now, I can tell you that this is how they do it.

Oh, BTW: When you see those real crappy/spammy results, those are the ones that are getting filtered out.

So if you are #1 now, you will not even be in the index on Monday morning.

[BillyS]

Yeah, the search for "the" returns 45 million, that is not even close.

[atlrus]

It's just crazzzzzy...

My site used to be #4, and now:

On Yahoo shows (in the most stable case): #3
On CNN: #4
On Alltheweb: Nowhere
Using a Yahoo rank checker: #1

it's killing me, man...

[Steelbank]

I am seeing very limited results for my specific keywords. On Friday our keywords were returning a total of 7M search results. Today, Y! is returning only 1,250.

Anyone else seeing this?

[bekyed]

Oh, BTW: When you see those real crappy/spammy results, those are the ones that are getting filtered out.

So if you are #1 now, you will not even be in the index on Monday morning.

There is no evidence to suggest this as the serps have had at least 4 different results today going from directory listings back to yahoo search, and why Monday morning?

Bek

[RS_200_gto]

From 2,570,000 to 109
(yahoo is shrinking - google is getting larger)

[caveman]

Ya, something is clearly not right here. Almost as if huge chunks of data have fallen out. Wait and see.

[FromRocky]

huge chunks of data have fallen out

I have the same thought.

[powerstar]

results seem to be back to "normal" (as of Friday)

[WebOKane]

Seems like a Category 5 is rolling through Yahoo.

We have been dropped completely - were 18

Thanks to everyone who've posted here - helping us know we're not alone in this

[FromRocky]

No. of pages (one of my sites) indexed in Yahoo
Last night: 602 pages
1 hr ago: 74 (no Index page)
45' ago: 6 (no Index page) Used site:mysite.com produced 300+ pages with old & deleted pages
30 hr ago: 74 (no Index page)
15' ago: 6 (no Index page)
now 548 (with index page)

[blend27]

I see everything back to normal, #1

[bekyed]

You are obviously blind, if you think the serps are normal

Bek

[caveman]

blend27, you may be right.

Just had another looksee, and could not pull up the bad results after a bunch of refreshes across several sets of SERP's.

Is it safe? ;-)

[Steelbank]

I certainly think that we can all agree that the Y! search results just haven't been of the same quality since the begining of the year.

While things are NOT safe for the time being, Y! is with no doubt rolling out another update.

one thing I am seeing which is new to us is that the title tags for the site are showing a different title for our sites on Y! How could this be? Is Y! now choosing titles for the sites? Anyone else seeing this?

[textex]

I see normalcy as well. I do see a minor update in SERPS for the industries we are in.

The junk SERPS has happened to me before. Prior, I would delte my cookies and normalcy would return. Today was obviously something different.

[blend27]

and back to square 0, and back to #1, then 4, then 1.

I am going back to watching SCI-FI.

See ya all on monday(SERP I mean)

[Jane_Doe]

The serps look to me like they were a few days ago now, though last night there seemed to have been some dramatic changes for awhile.

[sugarrae]

Gone for me too caveman - and the searches are now pulling a relatively sane number of results (so it says ;) for each term. Hopefully they'll tweak whatever that was, hard, before they put it into use again. LOL.