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What is wrong with Yahoo! Think about it, how many people will stop submitting sites to Yahoo, and paying $300 dollars annually. On a side note. Yahoo! is a Directory, ever since its creation, its founders started it off as a Directory of there favorite web pages.
Clearly a huge mistake for Yahoo leaving its roots as the worlds/internets largest Web Directory.
Some Facts:
Recently added to the Yahoo! Directory
· Tuesday Oct. 8 - 1032
· Monday Oct. 7 - 726
· Sunday Oct. 6 - 30
· Saturday Oct. 5 - 27
· Friday Oct. 4 - 736
· Thursday Oct. 3 - 671
· Wednesday Oct. 2 - 893
Source: [dir.yahoo.com...]
Just think at 300 dollars a pop/annually how much money is Yahoo going to lose? I know they are lossing my business if they keep this up.
Just some quick math, in the last week Yahoo! added 4,115 web sites to there directory at 300 dollars a piece. That is 1,234,500 dollars in one week. 1.2 Million Dollars! How long can they afford to neglect Yahoo! Express users.
BrAsS mOnKeY
You can now run a reporter mission on Yahoo and get your Google positions
In many cases this will be like tipping a truckload of Google spam directly into the Yahoo search results where before Yahoo had a good set of researched links.
I know this because that's exactly what's now happened to some of our client's listings :-(
ckern, you and I seem to have the same problem. The change caught me completely off guard. My site has been listed with Yahoo for about a month now. I payed my $299 and Y! put it up. It's been my main source of hits so far. I submitted with Google about 3 weeks ago, and as far as I know, they haven't crawled my site yet. What does that mean? The changeover brought over the Google results, and I don't even exist there yet! My hits went from 900 a day to zip.
brass monkey: >>I guess it goes back to only the strong survive, the rest is dead.
(strong meaning the ones with money...)<<
amen.
Relying solely on one expensively bought listing for traffic anyhow is a very easy but very risky strategy.
Getting tons and tons of Google traffic however is free! You just need knowledge and hard work.
Anyhow your Y! listing should bring you into Google pretty fast.
I sure do miss my Yahoo listing though.
With their new system we are receiving 10 times the traffic.
I guess it was a case of the really bad could only get better.
I spoke with a few clients today who had contacted their lawyers about the yahoo bait and switch, both were advsed to register a complaint with the state attorney generals office. (for starters)
Do the lawyers have experience in internet business issues? (Most lawyers i know dont have a clue about how the Internet works, but that doesn't matter because they know everything anyway.. :) (with apologies to lawman of course!)
From my experience with lawyers, they will almost always suggest getting redress through legal means at first meeting. Heck, it all comes down to billable hours. They get those whether you win or lose!
Clearly -- if users are header towards Google (regardless of why; better, more relevant results) you must work with this in mind.
Strategic alignment with Google may not be the only alternative but I really don't see any others. Not doing anything... seems short-sighted.
If you've ever been to court, you would know that it really has *little* to do with the attorney and a lot to do with the judge.
When you test the bounds of "ethics", you normally get to meet the judge, and they can do some very strange things.
At the same time, at least one person is saying that their Y! directory listings that have been buried for years are now finally resulting in referrals. And i have seen that with a few of mine as well.
Personally, it seems that the vast majority who have been hit have had highly optimised listings in the old ranking system, including the old keyword rich domains. That's fair enough.. its' SEO.. they put a lot of thought into optimizing for Y!
Hoever, it has to be realised that any search engine can change the way they display listings, change their algo, go out of business, or merge whenever they want unless they have expressly guaranteed a certain level of exposure. It happens in Google all the time, while Y! seems to have been fairly predicitable for a year or two. That made it easier to optimize for them, and also resulted in a less than useful search for their visitors.
All that has happened was inevitable one day down the road. SEO works on what has worked in the past. If it works in the future it is great, but not guaranteed. After many months of not changing things, when the change came, it took a lot of people unawares.
Adding one thing... Lawyers will take many ($299) fees and don't gaurantee anything either, and no refund when they lose -- hmmm... this seems vaguely familar.
I'll stick with Yahoo.
I used to use Yahoo when searching the web because I knew that the quality reviewed listings would come up first and then the google results if I didn't find what I was looking for. I no longer plan on using yahoo anymore because it shows the same results as google. I might as well just use google itself now.
I hope everyone stops paying for a Y! listing, that would teach them.
I got hammered on this recent yahoo change but that is only half of my complaint. What good is Yahoo anymore, is every search engine just going to display Google results, I'm sick of seeing it everywhere (not that it isn't good), I like to see some variety.
I used to use Yahoo when searching the web because I knew that the quality reviewed listings would come up first and then the google results if I didn't find what I was looking for. I no longer plan on using yahoo anymore because it shows the same results as google. I might as well just use google itself now.
Sounds a bit like the same problem Yahoo is having, if all your traffic is going to Google -- you'd better think quick, or become extinct.
I hope everyone stops paying for a Y! listing, that would teach them.
Change is change: if what you suggest occurs the fallout as follows
drop in listings to Yahoo
less Yahoo revenue
less listings
less traffic
less traffic >> less sponsors and drop in media buys
still more "less revenue"
Yahoo closes doors
Google makes less revenue and changes to paid per inclusion model.
I guess the alternative is better?
Well, that would make Google just like the old Yahoo!
I have no problem with Y! switching to Google results. I just wish they would have left the directory as the default search results. if they would have done that, I doubt that my hits would have suffered quite as badly.
Now I guess I'm stuck waiting for Google to index my site. :(
Certainly, an ethical business would have provided a warning like, "Please be aware that as of October __, sites listed in the directory will no longer be displayed in Yahoo search results. Yahoo directory listings will be available to visitors via category navigation and by category links displayed in search results. Continue - Yes/No".
Wishful thinking, I guess. With spectacularly bad timing, I signed up a couple of clients mere days before the change. Both can afford it, and I put the best spin I could on the changes, but I couldn't help feeling that I would have spent that $299 somewhere else where it could have done more good.
I think a comparable situation would be the owner of a mall closing its doors for renovations during the christmas rush, and in turn destroying peoples businesses. What kinda sense would that make.
The most common type of implied warranty—a "warranty of merchantability," means that the seller promises that the product will do what it is supposed to do."
FTC Warranty Page [ftc.gov]
Maybe a directory is supposed to be published, I'm not sure.
I submitted a new site to yahoo and gained front page positions on major searchterms. The fantastic listing was in on Sunday then everything changed a few days later.
The point is, that anyone who bothered to spend a few hours analysing the listings, could gain a good position in yahoo. It didn't need a quality site, just one that would be "acceptable".
Now we have google, which for the user is certainly much better that yahoo ever was!
In short, we need to read these forums and get on with SEO! Moaning will get us nowhere with Yahoo (unfortunately!)
4.) WG Manufacturing Inc. - offers widgets
Meanwhile a competitor that ranks fifth - not being in the Directory - has their Google mish-mash desc. which is close to:
5.) Blue Widgets - Blue Widgets for half-price!
We provide custom-made BLUE WIDGETS! ... the best materials ... and we practically give them away ... come visit us today ... free sex ... retch ...
Now, THERE'S a great result. Well done, Yahoo's!
Actually Mark, I've seen results that indicate a ranking penalty in google if your site is in a yahoo! category along these lines:
/adwords/overture/competition/money_word
My take is, and always has been, that if these tricks by L$ and Yahoo had been conducted in the real world (as opposed to a virtual one) the execs of both firms would be in jail or dead (murdered by an angry mob).
Unfortunately they can and do hide behind the corporate and virtual facade, and consequently get away with clear deception. I won't rant about morals and ethics, because I suspect that by now 90%+ of folk already recognize they haven't got any (although there will always be apologists for them). It's just too depressing to think about, so we simply have to get on with it as best we can.
So I'm maybe not quite as heartbroken as the rest of you and as yahoo.co.uk has always show results in a different format, I'm (naively perhaps) hoping they continue to do so!
Google must have finally indexed my site, cause my hits are coming back. I'm just praying to the internet gods that it stays that way.
