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What are the advantages of a Yahoo listing?

If the SERPS are Google's

         

Lilliabeth

9:01 pm on Oct 15, 2003 (gmt 0)

10+ Year Member



Why pay for a listing in Yahoo? I understand PR is passed, but that seems like a rather high price.

I must be missing something. Please enlighten me!

Marcia

9:18 pm on Oct 15, 2003 (gmt 0)

WebmasterWorld Senior Member 10+ Year Member



>>seems like a rather high price.

That depends on the PR and number of sites in the category, and some sites need the boost. For some, it isn't a high price for a one way link without any reciprocal link required.

Another consideration, even if a minor one, is this paper that's been around for a while

When Experts Agree: Using Non-Affiliated Experts to Rank Popular Topics [www10.org]

Our approach is based on the same assumptions as the other connectivity algorithms, namely, that the number and quality of the sources referring to a page are a good measure of the page's quality. The key difference consists in the fact that we are only considering "expert" sources - pages that have been created with the specific purpose of directing people towards resources.

We could take how they're defining expert sources to be authoritative directories or hubs

We define an expert page as a page that is about a certain topic and has links to many non-affiliated pages on that topic.

There may or not be any way to tell whether that's coming into consideration with scoring, but it's probably safe to think that links from "expert" sites like that can help identify those sites that can be considered to be in certain "neighborhoods" or web communities.

Some of the philosophy behind that:

How Teoma Works [sp.teoma.com]

onedumbear

9:30 pm on Oct 15, 2003 (gmt 0)

10+ Year Member



Aside from the increased PR, "which is worth $300 to some people, here are some other points...
What are the advantages of a Yahoo listing?
If the SERPS are Google's

That statement is sort of misleading. I assume when you say "yahoo listing" that you mean the directory listing that cost $300. If you do a search in the yahoo directory, it does not return "google serps". Only the yahoo web search returns google serps. More specifically, yahoo has it's own directory whereas google uses the ODP.

Yahoo feeds it's own directory results into the websearch results also.
Yahoo will not be using google forever.

IMO if a listing in DMOZ were to cost $300, it would be a better deal than a yahoo directory listing.
Here's my onedumbear logic on that...A listing in either one of these directories is good for a boost in PR.
What makes DMOZ a more valueable link IMO is that lots of people run copies of the DMOZ. So instead of getting 1 new link (as you would with yahoo), you get links from all the websites that run a DMOZ feed.

Lilliabeth

4:27 pm on Oct 18, 2003 (gmt 0)

10+ Year Member



Thanks so much for answering! Since that paper has been around since 2001, it wasn't as compelling as it might have otherwise been, but interesting nonetheless. I wonder if accepting money is the best way to be labelled an expert, but I don't really know; I don't think I'm in an industry that is frought with sites that wouldn't make it into the Yahoo directory if they tried. I realize they keep the money even if they reject you, but if they reject too much, people will avoid trying.

That statement is sort of misleading. I assume when you say "yahoo listing" that you mean the directory listing that cost $300.

Yes, I meant the directory listing that costs $300. Is there some other kind of Yahoo listing?

If you do a search in the yahoo directory, it does not return "google serps". Only the yahoo web search returns google serps.

I will clarify... I meant searching by using the huge box at the top of the page that says "Search" by it.

yahoo has it's own directory whereas google uses the ODP.

It looks like to me that while yahoo has it's own directory, it still uses ODP.

I thank you both for clarifying that I am not missing something. There are no compelling reasons to spend the money that I was previously unaware of.

When I look at my favorite category in the Yahoo directory, I see lots of competitors. But when I search Google or Yahoo (by using the huge box at the top of the page that says "Search" by it), I get different competitors entirely. This has led me to believe that some companies in my cat invest time in SEO, and some throw money at it. Perhaps doing both would be the best for some, but I am still not convinced it would be worth the money for my company.

onedumbear

4:47 pm on Oct 18, 2003 (gmt 0)

10+ Year Member



Lilliabeth... Further clarification
It looks like to me that while yahoo has it's own directory, it still uses ODP.

When you do a search from the main yahoo search box, "the huge one", it returns "web results". These results are currently still from google and they often contain ODP listings.
When you do a search in the "yahoo website directory", you will only see yahoo directory listings and not ODP

derekwong28

5:12 pm on Oct 19, 2003 (gmt 0)

WebmasterWorld Senior Member 10+ Year Member



When Yahoo directory results were searchable in Yahoo a year ago, we got around 100 hits a day. Now it is not searchable, we only get a few hits a day.

Frankly, it is not worth it unless you are a B2B business or a locally based business.

Lilliabeth

6:17 pm on Oct 19, 2003 (gmt 0)

10+ Year Member



derekwong2b,
I have a locally-based (although we do have customers from around the country) B2B, so I'm interested... why does that make a difference?