Yahoo UK - Still worth the listing fee?

Are you still submitting

[Smiley]

Have just been checking my accounts for the last few months I was surprised to see no spend on Yahoo submission. Must have made a sub-conscious decision that it wasn’t worth it any more.

Do you think Yahoo UK gives a good return in terms of direct traffic from the directory listings? Or is the inbound link worth the cash anyway?

[webdiversity]

Yes to both.

Directory traffic would make a listing (well placed) just as economical as several paid inclusions in terms of number of referrals and the PR is also worthwhile having.

[engine]

Agreed with webdiversity on both counts.

For the long term, Yahoo has consitently provided high value referals.

I just refreshed the current figures for the reference sites I use for long term tracking:
Yahoo 49.76%
Google 23.49%
Excite 11.76%
MSN Search 5.27%
Altavista 4.04%

It also depends upon the site in question as to the level of success.

Taking one site with a poor performance with a relatively poor performance in Yahoo the results are:
Google 45.40%
Excite 25.47%
Yahoo 9.24%
Lycos 6.34%
Altavista 6.34%

That is still 10% of referals. Quite acceptable.

[Smiley]

Engine,

Your figures I would assume include yahoo search traffic and direct directory referals. My stats show direct directory referals small in comparision to the google powered yahoo search. Would you agree?

Smiley

[engine]

Smiley, surprisingly, the figures are Yahoo directory only. The Yahoo search brings very little.

I can only attribute this to the fact that the keyword/phrase in the directory involved perfectly matches the volume searches. A less well optimised listing will achieve a much lower performance.

ADDED forgot to mention, the test sites are nowhere near the top of the SERPS (that is deliberate). If they were then the figures may be totally different.

[Smiley]

Wow, surprised indeed. Thanks for the help both of you. I'm off to yahoo submit...

[George]

I still find Yahoo to be well worth the cash, but only for the listing, not the directory. Those figures on the directory are amazing engine, I will have to rethink too!

How about affiliate sites. Are they still worth getting listed? Will Yahoo let them in? The ones that do all the selling, and the "add to basket" button takes you from the affiliate site...
Anyone done this successfully?

[Smiley]

Hi George.

Yahoo will list affiliate sites if there is enough content, althought in your specific case I have no experience. Maybe a price comparison site would be more likely to get in.

Smiley

[George]

Thanks for that Smiley, this Affiliate stuff is quite new to me!

[GodLikeLotus]

engine: is the site with Yahoo top UK focused or Global?because that really is amazing. Maybe you need to improve something for Google.

[ish]

engine

When you say 'long term', what period are you referring to?

Judging by the percentage of Excite referrals it looks like you have gone back as far as about 1997!

[Symbios]

I always submit to Yahoo.co.uk with new sites as unlike Yahoo.com its a one off fee, also many of the .co.uk listings get into Yahoo.com.

Most if not all of the sites submitted return the outlay in a pretty short time with the Y traffic and of course there is the added PR boost however slight.

Returns are not as great as they used to be in the good old days with Yahoo when the description they gave you and your URL could be served up at the top of Yahoo within 2 days but I still think its a good investment.

Also it worth speculating upon the face of Yahoo in times to come, they reshaped to Yahoogle and could possibly change to Directory biased results augmented by Inktomi results or vice versa, who knows but theres alway the chance that the SERPS will favour sites in the Yahoo directory so I think its a good idea.