Yahoo referrals down.

[Brett_Tabke]

I've been studying Yahoo directory referral trends from June of this year till now. I'm seeing a significant downward trend in large categories (more than 10 listings), and a minor downward trend in smaller sub-cats (less than 10 listings).

It's surprising, given the upward trend in the fall of searches. I think the latest round of changes Yahoo has made, is having a pretty profound effect on referrals.

[2_much]

I've seen this too Brett. I'd attributed it to the fact that more and more sites are being added, so people have more to choose from.
I'm not sure how you're getting your numbers though.
Also, wouldn't it depend on how the sites are ranking, etc?
Yahoo, however, is still sending very qualified users to my websites. Many of them are buyers (for various categories).
Yet there does seem to be a consensus that Yahoo is quickly going downhill.
I'll try to do some research and get some numbers for you (not just speculation).

[markd]

For the first time last month (November) Yahoo was in third position for referals for many clients.

Generally, first was Google, second MSN and third Yahoo.

IMHO this is due to the recent changes in SERPS rather than new additions etc.

[DrCool]

I would have to say the difference in referrals is from the change in the serps as well. When Overture came into the equation my referrals for one site dropped to about a third of what they were. During the first week of November I had over 1,100 referrals and last week it was down to 300. My rankings have also changed and I am sure that has an effect on it also. I have been able to make up the traffic other places but it would be nice to see the hits start coming again.

[skibum]

With the recent changes (not displaying as many categories on the default search, less people probbaly drill down into the categories to find sites. If a site doesn't come up near the top of the search results it seems much less likely that someone will drill down to find it.

WRT to other SERPs, Chris_R brought up in another thread the idea of the amount of choices available to the user on a search results page. As this goes up, traffic to any one element probably goes down. The addition of GoTo results has had this effect.

Finally, as more and more sites enter the directory the chance of finding any one getting a click goes down. Look$mart will probably experience this to the largest degree since they will accept just about anything, but as YAHOO! grows, the referrals per listing should continue to decrease unless the number of searches increases accordingly.