Questions for Yahoo!

Round them up and post them here.

[WebGuerrilla]

Over the past couple of weeks, we’ve been fortunate to have several Yahoo employees spending time answering questions about the new Yahoo Search.

This level of participation in a webmaster forum from a public search company is truly unprecedented, and is something we definitely would like to continue. However, the shear volume of questions and responses we’ve received has created some threads that have become quite difficult to follow.

So, in order to try and make things a bit easier to follow, I think now would be a good time to move to a Q & A similar to the format that we’ve used in the past in the Google forum.

Here’s how it will work:

Questions will be posted in this thread. We will let this thread run for the next few days. Once we have a solid list of quality questions, this thread will be locked. If/when someone from Yahoo Search decides to respond to a question from this thread, we will split off that particular Q&A into its own thread. Any follow-up questions or discussions will take place in the new thread. Doing this will help us keep everything on-topic.

With that in mind, here are some ground rules:

1. Keep the questions focused on Yahoo Search’s products and services. (No asking Tim what his favorite color is)

2. Keep the questions short and sweet. (You will have the opportunity to get long-winded in any follow-up discussions).

3. No specific site information. (We are not the Yahoo help desk or spam police)

4. Keep the tone positive and professional. (All rants will be nuked)

5. Read the other questions before you post yours. (I hate spending time deleting duplicates).

And finally, please keep in mind that just because you ask, doesn’t mean you will get an answer. There are obviously many questions that Yahoo can’t/won’t answer. And we (Mods/Admins) have no input or control regarding which questions, if any, they choose to answer.

WG

[Alternative Future]

Sorry I posted in the wrong thread at first

Hi Yahoo_Mike,
I have had a site in the Yahoo directory since roughly 1998, and always been listed in the Yahoo SERP's until recently when you brought the Ink database back into play. I have been having some problems with the Ink SERP's since I foolishly allowed another domain ext. to redirect to my domain without a 301 or 302 in place. I am working on getting back into the Ink database, but find it strange that you say that sites in the Yahoo directory are getting indexed.

I have sent off an email to yahoo and still awaiting a reply - although I did state in the mail that I understood the workload you guys are under and didn't mind waiting.

Could we have more clarification on the directory being indexed in the SERP's as they are now.

Note: I am also listed in AltaVista with no problems there.

Many thanks for your help it is really appreciated.

-George

[Arctrust]

Yahoo-Mike

Background:
Our site is listed in the Y directory and the as you know - the listing was edited by Yahoo. Additionally we also have our home page indexed by the free crawl over 9 months ago.

Question:
Why does Yahoo-Search return the directory listing instead of the crawled home page? The directory listing is not inspiring and as such does not get many clickthoughs when it shows up in the SERP and we generally are pretty far up in the SERPS.

What is the thinking in showing the directory listing versus the crawled page? - Is this another way for Yahoo to ensure that a site pays - one way or an other?

Thank you.

ARC

[walkman]

Hi Mike,
how does Y! handle links from "bad sites". You don't link to them, they link to you.
Forums, FFAs, blogs and all that other stuff...a competitor can do that too you know....

[GS_schua]

Hi Mike,

I have been monitoring my website for the past 3 weeks and the number of pages being indexed by the main Y! and the geographical Y! is different from each other.

1) How many datacentres does Y! have?
2) Which geographical datacentres is the main Y! connected to?

Thanks and Best Regards,
Shannon

[soapystar]

HI MIke
I have been told my site has an editorial decision. Why then does the editorial decision say a site is fine when you charge $299 for the directory listing? Why does the questionable INk penalty list overide Yahoo's own editorial process?

[steveb]

Will a higher Yahoo toolbar YR rank generally mean free crawling more often?

[TomV]

Yahoo_Mike,

I notice that Yahoo is opting for a snippet approach similar to Google's in the descripton. Is there a tag similar to Google's nosnippet tag that allows you to opt out of having one appear? Thanks.

[RammsteinNicCage]

Change Request Form question:

I tried using the change request form to get my old angelfire address out of the results and it is telling me that the angelfire URL was not found in Yahoo's database. However, when I do a search for the main keyword, it is number 6 in the results. I did a copy and paste of the URL that is listed underneath the result, so it is not a typing error. How can we fix this?

Jennifer

[doc_z]

According to Yahoo's guidelines 'Pages (that) dedicated to directing the user to another page' are unwanted. Are all kinds of redirects problematic? Namely, can the redirection to the frameset in case of framed pages (i.e. showing the same page but with navigation frame), the Flash detection and redirection depending on the installation of the plug-in or a language dependent redirection cause problems?

[fello]

>Yahoo-Mike said this in other post:
If you want to appeal the removal of your URLs, send an email to [e-mail].

I emailed that address last week but got no reply. My site was dropped withing the last week from Yahoo SERPs. There have been no apparent changes on the site that should get us dropped.

I'm lost.

[Powdork]

What does it mean when "?referrer=OV" (no quotes) is added to the end of your url in the listings for Y! and MSN?

[crobb305]

Yahoo_Mike said Site Match may not be beneficial (if the only concern is getting indexed) if a URL is "well found" by the free crawler. Is it safe to assume that, if there are incoming links to the url, the url is going to be "well found"?

[nkakar]

Mike, can yahoo ban sites from spamming and if so can these sites be taken off the penalty in any way?

[johnser]

Is there a way to submit multiple URLs on the free submit faster for examination by Slurp?

[soapystar]

Looking for clarification on what makes a site subject to an editorial decision...

if a site was to copy google in every element..i.e. pr checker toolbar...cached pages in serps...."did you mean spellchecker" on serps...that carried a large amount of advertising.....that carried the exact same hotel reservation database as site after site and simply sent the user to travelcity..i.e its an affiliate website....where all its content is taken from other websites....where there had been past privacy concerns with that site..

would that site be droppped from yahoo?

[jrokesmith]

I have had a site that has been in the Yahoo directory for several years. About a month ago, the site was up for renewal. A Yahoo Directory editor changed the title of the site but did not change the description. Suddenly, a couple of days ago, the site appears to be dropped from the index. Do editorial changes (ex: a title change) cause a site to be dropped from the index? Is it likely that this site will be indexed again in several weeks with the new title as you stated that sites in the Yahoo directory typically get indexed in several weeks?

Thanks

[Seattle_SEM]

Mike,
YahooSlurp has indexed my home page, and three other pages from my domain. I'm not doing anything wrong, and this site has been live for over three months now, with over 100,000 pages just waiting to be crawled.

Aside from paying, what can I do to accelerate the crawl of my site?
I've tried the Free Add Url, and just about everything else I can think of..

Thanks!

[nkakar]

Once again, thanks Mike for the response. Im wondering if yahoo has banned my site because it still shows up on there when I do a search for my domain, but nothing comes up on the serps.. Is there any way I can check? and if a site does get banned, how is it possible to fix that?

Thanks a lot Mike!

[soapystar]

will sites emailing the appeal address be told if they have been reviewed a second time regardless of the decision made on that review?

[fello]

Disappearing Sites...

My site has disappeared on or around March 18th. So have the sites of a lot of other people. My site is still in the index when I search for sitename.com but not when I search for sitename or any keyword or keyword phrase on the site.

This has happened to a lot of other sites and we have no clue why this happened?

[webmktg]

Yahoo slurp is crawling my website daily. Unfortunately slurp is crawling most of my URLS partially in other words it is crawling wrong urls.
For example Yahoo slurp is crawling www.webmasterworldebsite.com/destination-guide.html as www.webmasterworldebsite.com/des

Some of my pages have got listed in Yahoo. Some of the pages listed with correct URLs and some with wrong urls.

Don’t know whether I’m doing something wrong or is this how Yahoo slurp is crawling websites? Please advice.

[webmktg]

If I submit my website using Yahoo Free Submit how long will it take to crawl and list my website in Yahoo.

Do I have to submit all the URLs of my website or only the home page?

[Eljaybe]

I'm looking for a list of search engines that SiteMatch covers. I was using Position Tech for some time before Site Match took over. Does it submit to all the same search engines that Position Tech covered?
HotBot? AltaVista? AlltheWeb? Lycos? MSN? Excite?
I want to know which ones I lost by switching to Site Match.
Thanks.

[Eljaybe]

I have another Yahoo question, actually about the Yahoo Directory...

My client's site was included in the Yahoo Directory at least a couple years ago by a different SEO company. The URL of my client's site changed late last year and we placed a redirect on the site. I've been trying to submit the URL change to Yahoo Directory but never have any luck. I don't know the "magic" email address of the original submitter and neither does my client. So, how do I get thru to Yahoo and get them to change our URL in the Directory?

[Chicken Juggler]

I have a site that I had redirected to my main site for lack of something else to do with it. I typed in my company name and the top 3 results are sites I have redirected to it. None of the top 3 sites have any backlinks and they are just redirects. I can't even find my company.

[Symbios]

Respect to Yahoo_Mike for answering the questions so far, I didn't post earlier as I didn't expect such a splended effort from Yahoo, here are my questions;

I've noticed that Yahoo hijack traffic for some profitable searches by placing their services above the search results, now that you are making extra money for the ppc listings will this continue, also if it does not would the change take place across the regional Yahoo's such as UK.

There's been some discussion about 301 redirects, I recently had to move a domain name as I had some issues with the one that I'd had the good fortune to get listed in the UK directory some years back, I put in 301 redirects to the new domain and emailed Yahoo to request the changes as notified by the original acceptance by bizex@yahoo, I've not heard a thing, I know you guys are busy but what is the typical response time to this sort of request, its quite important to us guys.

[edited by: Symbios at 11:08 pm (utc) on Mar. 23, 2004]

[RoySpencer]

Why does Ink only crawl a couple thousand of our pages, but Google gets all 55,000? (Google goes one level deeper, three "clicks" rather than two). Might this change in the future?

[EarWig]

Thanks to WebGuerrilla and Yahoo for this thread and the response from Y employees - Excellent to be able to get some feedback and help.
A strange dilemma has recently surfaced.
A very old site which is subject to robots.txt
User-agent: *
Disallow: /
and robots exclusion tags in every page has just appeared in Y's new search results. This URL is not listed anywhere within the Y's directory or any other directory/search engine.

The correct site, which is listed in Y's directory, has now vanished from Y's search results completely.
There are no redirects involved with either url.

Y's bot "appears" not to be obeying my robots.txt It appears as though the correct site has been dropped in favour of the site carrying the robots.txt
Any help appreciated?
Further info available where required.
Regards to all
Ray
EW

[crobb305]

Yahoo_mike said:

Your site will be reviewed again if the URL is submitted to Site Match. There is no guarantee that it will be accepted. You should follow the content guidelines as I mentioned in a previous post. If you are working with a reseller, they may be able to provide guidance to you as to whether you have potential violations. If you submit a URL and we find that you are no longer in violation of the content guidelines your site will be accepted in Site Match.

In a previous post, it was mentioned that those with penalties should not bother paying for Site Match, because the penalties carried over. Yahoo_mike, are you now saying that this is no longer true? If the needed changes are made to the site, and a Site Match editor deems it appropriate for the index, will the editor manually remove the pre-existing penalty? What if the editor doesn't realize there is a penalty (doesn't properly investigate)?

Thanks
C

[helenp]

Searching for 301 in my log, I found this:
I don´t have any 301, so these are error ones.:

This one is certainly strange,
slurp and now all the web as well only reads my robots.txt,
and this Ip belongs to Yahoo! Inc.
207.126.229.20 - - [03/Mar/2004:00:03:51 -0500] "GET /espanol HTTP/1.0" 301 329 "-" "Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 5.0; Windows NT 4.0)" IP=Yahoo! Inc.

This is strange though it´s always (this entry is frecuent) the same
index page, though as if that site has something strange in their code:
80.13.101.123 - - [01/Mar/2004:09:47:33 -0500] "GET /sales HTTP/1.0" 301 327 "http://www.splut.com/cgi/visit.cgi" "Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 4.01; Windows 98)"

Note that Yahoo tried to get my spanish home page (GET /espanol ) the same one that are indexed as well with an wrong url, as I told on post: [webmasterworld.com...]
won´t copy it though it´s long.

If there is something with some strange 301 matters.... even though I don´t have 301,
when yahoo fix their 301 problem, would I be in automatically?