Should I renew my Y! Directory listing?

$299 is a lot money for seemingly little return

[martyt]

(Couldn't find any recent discussions on the topic...)

Got a notice that my Yahoo! directory listing is up for renewal in a few weeks, and I'm trying to decide whether to renew or not. I run an e-commerce site if that matters.

I bought into the directory last year because my site was new (about 2 months old at the time) and I read in numerous places that it was imperative to be listed in Yahoo so as to garner good ranking elsewhere in other search engines.

But now a year's gone by; I'm listed in all the search engines (though my ranking isn't as good as I'd like) and I haven't thought much about my Yahoo directory listing since I bought it.

I get only a little traffic from Yahoo - less than half as much as google, and about 3/4 of what I'm getting from MSN. Almost no Yahoo traffic comes to my site from the directory listing itself -- most is from searches. So I'm wondering whether the directory listing is really doing anything useful for me.

What will be the impact on my rankings if I don't renew my listing? Can I make it up by spending the $299 in additional PPC listings?

How do I decide (rationally) whether it's worth the money to renew?

[rise2it]

Rational - did you make $299 in PROFIT from the traffic you received?

[soapystar]

if youre a banned site or one of the many not ranking because of problems with the Yahoo serps then a directory listing is one of the only ways a user will find you by doing a domain name search.

[2_much]

I'm with rise2it, find it what your ROI was from the directory listing, then you can make the decision based on $$$.

[IITian]

Besides the traffic from the directory, also check your links. If you have many links to your site, the value of Y! directory link goes down. On the other hand if this is one of the few you have got, watch out for lower rankings on all the SEs after this link is removed.

[sanity]

What did you decide martyt?

[martyt]

*blush* ...

I got busy with "other" things and forgot to go cancel the automatic renewal of my Yahoo directory listing. So I guess I'm in for another year.

Oops.

[soapystar]

Does anyone have a directory listing for the traffic? I find that surprising. always thought part of the benefit was the other engines that crawl it and for the part it MAY play in current and future algo's.

[sanity]

I got busy with "other" things and forgot to go cancel the automatic renewal of my Yahoo directory listing. So I guess I'm in for another year.

LOL. Have you noticed any difference with rankings and/or traffic?