New Algo - Word Match?

[jk3210]

Take a look at a search for "south beach hotels" with no "" or +.

Compare the #1 and #7 sites.

Questions:
1) Site #7 is higher up the directory structure than site #1, (doesn't look like it but it is) and has only one less occurance of the search terms than site #1, yet it ranks much further down. Why?

2) If description is given a higher weight, what explains site #4 that has NO description at all?

3) Site #1 and #7 deal with "south beach hotels." Results #2 thru #6 don't. So, wouldn't that prove that Yahoo isn't using any sort of click-thru data? IOW, isn't it resonable to assume that someone searching for "south beach hotels" wouldn't click on site #6, which is from the category "SOUTH Carolina > Myrtle BEACH > HOTELS?"

Maybe I'm looking at it wrong, but it appears to me that Yahoo's new algo is some sort a basic word matching in the Title, Category and, to a lesser extent, description. (i.e. site #4 has no description!)

Yes/No?

[Brett_Tabke]

I think you were on the right track with everything but click pop. It's in there somewhere. I don't know how much weight it is being given, but it is the only variable that you can't pin down.

[seth_wilde]

They have definitely made a change to click pop in they're algo.... For a while it seemed as though it was the #1 most important factor, now its effects seem to be minimal if anything.

Another variable that's questionable is keywords in the url. They're definitely playing a part (looks like mostly on noncompetitive phrases), but the partial matching seems to be sporadic...

[jk3210]

Seth--

Basically I'm thinking the same way on the keyword in url bit.

If you look at a search for "miami beach hotels" with no ("") you see that sites #1 and 2 are very close.

The deciding factor for ranking site #1 in first place appears to me to be that site's url. It has the full search term, as opposed to site #2's 2/3 match of the search term.

I'm thinking that hypenated, keyword-rich urls just became more valuable.

[stavs]

any suggestions on how the click pop work, chaps?

do you think it just counts the number of clicks or do you think there is also a timing mechanism in place?

I'll be honest - I can't make head nor tails out of it.

The keywords in url theory is full of exceptions. I have a feeling that Yahoo haven't really got it together yet with their new toy.

[seth_wilde]

all the click pop work that I did was done with the assumption that their might be a timing mechanism in place (just to be careful) click on the link and never return type of thing....

"The keywords in url theory is full of exceptions"

Yep, especially with partial matching... I've seen it pick up the keyword in some and not with others... But, if you do a search for "webod" there little doubt that they're using it in some capacity...

[oilman]

>>hypenated, keyword-rich urls just became more valuable.

cha-ching - I use nothing else these days. I am consistently beating out non-hyphenated domains in my industry - all things being equal. The nice thing is you get to the top with the help of the domain name and then you get the click pop to kick in (whatever value it is) and you stay there.

[skibum]

It does seem like hyphenated keyword URLs are huge. For example if you look at this [search.yahoo.com] the site on top has been in YAHOO! for about a week.

It jumped right in above both Nexium and Prevcid both of which have massive advertising campaigns and therefore click popularity going for them, but keywords no in the URL.

It's not entirely consistent though. This search [search.yahoo.com] returns top results with the word in the title with the #1 site from the previous search coming in below those and the site with only the search term in the URL comes below those two and 8 others.

[jk3210]

Anyone want to speculate on which one of these would rank the highest:

keyword1-keyword2-keyword3.com
keyword1-keyword2-keyword3.net
keyword1-keyword2-keyword3.info

[oilman]

all things being equal you have to go with the .com

[eljefe3]

I've been watching a number of searches for product specific sites and travel destination sites. Nearly every domain has the product/destination in the URL as well as the title. The category that many high ranking sites are enjoying are not in the search string at all (for product specific sites) while in the travel destination sites most every site has the category in the search string.

From what I've seen there has been no movement at all since before the new look came into place. The sites are ranking just as they were if you went for the "view results by relevance" option before the change.

So where does this leave us, I don't know but this is what I've observed in some pretty doggone competitive 1 word search terms. Still waiting for them to shuffle the results a bit....