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A directory listing is Yahoo is hugely influential, not for direct traffic obviously, but for link popularity. Yahoo directory listings get picked up right away by Google and the rest. Big advantage if you have one.
Y works if you're starting out cold.
I'm actually thinking the directory works against you if you've optimized your homepage for search because the directory listing is pretty plain vanilla. No keyword can be mentioned more than once or it's stuffing; yet those sites that don't use the directory display title tag and meta description conveying more information to the searcher.
Pretty bogus if you ask me. Yahoo is all about $$$, more so than Google anyway.
Why am I not happy? Before getting in I had descriptive text from my site as my description and showed up for certain things, since being added to the directory I have a very lame short description and page title with no good keywords.
It's actually better from a Google inbound link perspective to be in the Yahoo directory, because it is a quality directory. But it hurts you from a Yahoo natural search perspective. It's really bass ackwards.
No serious site should not be in the Directory
I agree; its part of whom you are in a way. However what I would be very interested in understanding is why they will gladly take your $299, enter you in the directory, and rank you # 1, but have no qualms about penalizing your site and removing you from the index. Isn’t a bad site, a bad site?
No. They clearly are not even related concepts.
The Directory looks at content. Good content, added to the Directory.
The search results are different. If you spam a million blog comments, you might actually get removed from the Yahoo search results... and that has absolute zero to say about the quality of the content that merits a listing in the Directory. I can't imagine why people even bring this up since they are completely unrelated.
I can't imagine why people even bring this up
They bring it up to learn, and your answer did in fact provide some illumination for me; ranking techniques for placement in the index, vs. your actual content.
I already had good organic listings.
Submitted to the directory and was accepted.
Organic listings have not changed much since.
However, during a recent 'shuffle', my orgranic listing went away and my 'directory style' (title/description from directory) listing was shown (much much much lower) in the serps. Thankfully it was temporary.
Its almost as if they exist as two different records in the database as I have seen the 'directory style' listings a few more times (buried deeply).
The benefit I get from the listing is that they send me roughly 40 uniques per day and I get a strong back link.
well worth the 299
Yahoo Asia
Yahoo Australia & NZ
Yahoo Canada
Yahoo India
Yahoo Singapore
Yahoo UK & Ireland
Some categories send enough traffic to easily make up for the $299.00 annual fee.
Yahoo.com and Yahoo.co.uk directories use a redirected link, but I see both directories listed in the backlink results.
A free listing is possible if you're willing to wait.
Suggesting your site to additional relevant categories in the "Additional Information" field when submitting can result in being listed in more than one topical category.
If you have a geographical presence you should include the city, county, state (or equivalent) in the Geographic Location field. I've seen some sites listed in 4-5 Regional categories.
Yahoo will add quality deeplinks.
As others have noted, it can be well worth the $299.00 if you can't get in for free.
What? You work for Yahoo or somik?
Similar quality backlinks you can get with a little work on finding good authoritive sites unless you are lazy it will not cost you 300 per year.
The directory's use is very limited. It also has, as are all directories I know Dmoz very much included in this, incredibly HUMAN corrupted search results. I wont pay 300 a year to have some gimp write me up in thier beloved directory as either good or bad, depending as he or she is feeling on the day.
I dont know anyone who uses it personally and my logs tell me i get 1 hit a year maybe from it.
Conclusion = NOT WORTH THE MONEY
I'm confused...should we be in the directory or not?
If we pay them $299 to be in it and they reject the site, why don't they send us the money back?
Jay
Any serious site should be in the Directory. The only reason not to submit is because your site is crap and would never be accepted.
If paying 299 you will improve your ranking, that's good, but if paying 299 and it's not going to make much difference. Youc an pay that 299 to get very specific links from other sites.
By the way, it looks like Yahoo's free submission to the directory is not working. We have tried a very quality site for 8 months (9000 pages of rich content) no success. Yahoo's Search News has a very bad customer service too. Tried to submit to the News, for months, no success. No reply. They give you the option to submit and never give any reply.
So far the best customer service in Yahoo is the YPN for publishers. The rest is very bad. I hope Yahoo will read these lines and make some conclusions.
Thank you.
Submit you site to the Directory and thus pay Yahoo for doing absolutely nothing for your ranking in its own search results or any one else's.
This forum is obviously tainted with many people who believe Yahoo deserves to get paid for what from many many others is a free service. This is very very sad.
If you have the money and wish to throw it about yes go for it .. but if you are a simple small business that wonders how all the staff get payed year in year out DONT. It is fundamentally NOT WORTH THE MONEY.
If I advertise in a magazine what I do is analyse the results. Personally I do that by setting up a unique telephone number and using that in the add. Thus ... anyone who phones is either from that advert or a wrong number.
If i advertise on the internet I have logs which analyse where my hits are coming from.
.000001 % come from 2nd place in the yahoo directory for VERY competitive keywords.
Therefor (exaggerates massively) say 299 hits a year from the directory from the keywords would be like a pay per click campaign of 1 dollar per hit.
No thanks. It is obviously not worth the money.
...but if you are a simple small business that wonders how all the staff get payed year in year out DONT.
Any business that can't figure out how to pay their staff year after year has serious problems. Dropping $300 on a Y listing is the least of their worries.
The destitution of your business shouldn't even be a part of this discussion, because it's all about how much ROI you feel a listing can bring.
I think the directory is worth submitting too. The non-US mirrors provide extra links, too. I can't state it any better than steveb did in message #21.
I think the directory is worth submitting too.
Me too, but after dropping at least 15k on it over the years I have absolutely no definitive proof its been worth it. Used to be a rock solid believer it helped your rankings in Google, but these days I just don't know to be honest. I keep doing it so if someone has any real proof of its merits, I would be genuinely interested in hearing that, and I think the original poster would as well.
