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Q. Will Yahoo! Search results favor sites that pay for the Site Match program?
A. Absolutely not. Payment is not for placement or ranking in search results. Our focus is on delivering the highest quality search experience on the web. As a result, all web pages are algorithmically ranked in the results based on their objective relevance to each specific search query in order to ensure the highest quality search experience for users.
I wanted to do a little test to see whether or not this were true or whether the Yahoo! PFI would influence results.
For "Red Widgets" my site's index page ranked 76 on Tuesday. I then submitted to Yahoo! PFI via PositionTech in the afternoon. Wed and Thursday produced the same results - 76th position.
However, this morning my site miraculously appeared in the 11th position in the SERPs on Yahoo! for the exact same search. Either it is an amazing coincidence and that is one hell of an algo change or Yahoo! lied when they said PFI would not influence results. (Just to make sure it was not something on my computer/connection, I called a friend and had him do the search. The site was ranked 10 in his SERPs).
My site was definitely in the index and they said if you are in the index, there is no need to submit as it would not influence you results.
Everyone was skeptical when Yahoo! said PFI would not influence results. But every Yahoo! rep I have talked to since the announcement assured me this would have no influence.
Either they all lied or they are totally ignorant of how the algo works. Regardless, I do not think this is the way it should have been handled. Looksmart had some troubles after they switched to CPC model. Heck, they are basically Adsense affiliates. But at least they were honest. I do not know what is going to happen to Yahoo! but this does not seem like the way to beat out google or gain an overwhelming amount of support, loyalty or trust.
I remember a phrase back from my childhood days that is appropriate for this situation:
"Liar, Liar, pants on fire!"
I do believe you that this is true BUT if the Yahoo algo is similar to the Google algo concerning fresh data then fresh data always has an advantage. It is easy to make small changes on a page and with PFI you will always have a fresh tag for that page. Like that you have a big advantage in comparision to other sites not using PFI.
The crawled sites and the Site Match sites would still be trateted the same when it comes to relevance but you allow people to buy into one aspect of relevance which means that money outperforms relevance...
They do indeed...their pants are not on fire. In fact on the old Inktomi (PT) program I have evidence to show that PFI damaged your positions, don't have that for the new program (yet).
how else a page full of banners get to be #1?
Basically, the new ALGO probably gives better relevance than old inktomi stale stuff. Sure it'll treat other content the same, but it's crawling that other content so slow the first few months SiteMatch content will have an edge.
That's why the poster and myself have seen the results that we have seen. It only make sense to, because you don't want sitematch customers signing up right after the release of the program and not see their content getting some traffic..
Also, I bet anything that fresh content has an edge. So the day after Yahoo crawls you, you can compete with the SiteMatch content, but after a week (it still hasn't crawled you) you'll be considered Stale where as SiteMatch content could be considered fresh (especially if you are changing it on a daily basis).
[edited by: WebGuerrilla at 7:51 am (utc) on Mar. 24, 2004]
It is not only the algo that might give advantage to fresh data but also the nature of the web. People tend to search for recent news items - whether it is a basketball match, bombing in Spain, life in Mars, or whatever.
A page that is crawled frequently will obviously show up higher than a stale site becasue Yahoo's cache will have the terms surfers are looking for for the crawled site. Unless you can predict the futute to make it a level-field. The serp is already tainted.
Officially (to public) NO
Unoffcially (to clients) YES.
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I know we've said it before, but just to reiterate. we do treat the crawled and the Site Match sites the same when it comes to relevance.
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You have to read the between the lines what Yahoo_Mike said.
WHEN IT COMES TO RELEVANCE, the sitematch is same as free crawl. I think that is true.
But, WHEN IT COMES TO IMPORTANCE(or web rank or Yahoo rank), site match gets preference because they are human and machine reviewed sites.
Yahoo has its guideline for review and they consistently said that review process improves the search qulity.
Ranking is not only depedent upon the relevancy(keywords) but also on importance(link popularity or traffic popularity). You get no special treatment for relevancy by getting into SiteMatch but you DO GET SPECIAL CREDIT FOR IMPORTANCE by getting into SiteMatch.
So, the SiteMatch has influence on the ranking.
Very good catch, itisgene.
