Updated "My Sites" Service added to Yahoo Site Explorer

Looks a lot like Google Sitemaps

[ollhondallo]

I'm not sure if somebody already posted something about this elsewhere, but did you guys notice the new feature on Yahoo Site Explorer [siteexplorer.search.yahoo.com] that lets you add/manage your site (like Google Sitemaps)?

Site validation pending..

[tedster]

Yahoo's update to their SiteExplorer has given us a new interface with lots of helpful new features scattered throughout. Looks like feed submission has taken a very real uptick! There's plenty of Q&A on the "Help" page at [help.yahoo.com...]

Yes, I agree that the idea of an authenticated dialog with site owners does sound a lot like the Google Sitemaps Program -- now renamed as Google Webmaster Tools. But I doubt this is a case of copying. In my opinion SiteExplorer was already better webmaster information than anything Google offered to the public -- and you don't just roll out something like this in a couple days.

[bobsc]

---

System: The following message was spliced on to this thread from: http://www.webmasterworld.com/yahoo_search/3039362.htm [webmasterworld.com] by tedster - 10:27 pm on Aug. 8, 2006 (EDT -4)

---

We're now organized around sites you'd like to track. You can explore these, and add feeds to each site. Once you authenticate your site, you can see much more information about your URLs as you explore your site, and monitor feeds you've submitted...

[ysearchblog.com...]

[KenB]

This is very cool! Site Explorer and Google's tool formally known as Sitemaps are tools we needed years ago.

[youfoundjake]

I love it... pending authentication now as we speak, can we hope that msn will make one or does someone already know of one?

[Bewenched]

anyone created a feed yet for it?

did find this interesting
[developer.yahoo.com...]

It's a bit on the techie site but you can easily create your own searchs

[edited by: Bewenched at 3:46 am (utc) on Aug. 9, 2006]

[jomaxx]

I haven't signed up yet but the "more information" you get access to doesn't really sound that compelling. Nonetheless it's a great tool as it stands. Didn't Matt Cutts even suggest using it in one of the videos he recorded?

[Bewenched]

I'm going to try a few sample feeds of a flat txt urls.
I have some very deep pages I'd love to see spidered and see if they start populating into the searches.

[Receptional]

OK - site authenticated... Feed added... but what's this... The ONLY extra thing I get is the crawl date. Hopefully that is only the start of things to follow?

Am I missing something - Crawl date and language are the only extra things we get right? (I know what language my own sites are in... not worth authgetnticating just for that!)

[hunkydory]

Anyone got any tips of making the 'feed'?

Thx

[Bewenched]

They state you can have a flat text file of urls like, each one on a new line.. easy enough.

[mydomain.com...]
[mydomain.com...]

[andrewshim]

Just added my site and waiting for authentication.

I noticed they've dropped my index page from the serps about a month ago. It's been replaced with an internal page ranking at the same spot that my homepage used to. Maybe this will help them index my site properly... (?)

[chewy]

anybody notice you have to sign in to YSE - or was this just me?

[KenB]

anybody notice you have to sign in to YSE - or was this just me?

Of course you have to sign in. Part of the process is validating you actually own the site you want to work with on YSE.

[greeneggsandham]

For the life of me, I can't get my sites to authenticate. I tried downloading/uploading the files they provide - "failed". I tried creating a file from scratch as per their directions - "failed". I never had this kind of trouble with Google's sitemaps.

Only thing I can think of is that we're blocking Y! *somehow*. So, my question is... has anyone checked their logs to see how Y! is grabbing the authentication file? Is there a user-agent or IP address I can check to see if I've blocked them? We have some IP ranges blocked, but none jump out at me as being a culprit. We also have some spider UA's blocked via .htaccess, but nothing in our blocking logs shows any spiders/bots hitting the authentication files. I'm kinda baffled.

And Y! provides zero information as to why the authentication failed, of course :)

[whatcartridge]

Well, added a couple of sites and had them authenticated (took around 30 minutes to authenticate). I can now see a link to "Manage my Site". If I click that link I can do 1 of 2 things - submit a feed (of URLs) or check to see if my site is authenticated.

Is that it? I can't see anything like "last crawled" or what language my site is in. In any case both I know already anyway!

I know Yahoo is going to add more stuff to this tool but at the moment it's pretty useless. I will wait and see what they do with the list of deep links I submitted. I think I'll also make a few dummy pages not linked from anywhere else and submit those to see what Yahoo does with them.

[KenB]

Is that it? I can't see anything like "last crawled" or what language my site is in. In any case both I know already anyway!

It isn't very intuitive, but at the top of the page is a giant search box labeled Yahoo Search and is prepadded with "http://". If you start typing your domain name in it, it will display a drop down menu with your authenticated domain. Select your domain and then hit/click/whatever the "Explore URL" button. It will then give you the ability to drill into your site like you have never seen before. You can find almost all backlinks Yahoo knows about to specific pages know the last time a specific page was indexed, etc.

Very powerful stuff.

[abates]

When they hit my authentication file, it was from the IP address 72.30.76.134 using the user agent "curl/7.13.2 (i686-pc-linux-gnu) libcurl/7.13.2 OpenSSL/0.9.7g zlib/1.2.2"

[Bewenched]

Just an update. I added about 500 pages to the list last night and they were gathered and this morning when I searched to see how many pages we had in yahoo it was up .. about 500 pages. Fluke?

[greeneggsandham]

When they hit my authentication file, it was from the IP address 72.30.76.134 using the user agent "curl/7.13.2 (i686-pc-linux-gnu) libcurl/7.13.2 OpenSSL/0.9.7g zlib/1.2.2"

Thanks - I think that was the culprit. We had libcurl sort of blocked, so we'll see if unblocking it does the trick (it didn't need to be blocking the auth file!).

[4string]

Adding my rss feed yahoo automatically removes the trailing slash! This drives me nuts.

[skuba]

Hi,

Now that we can submit a site feed, is there still a need to use Yahoo Search Submit? Where we pay per click and it's basically a paid site submit.

Will one rank better than the other? Was anybody here using Yahoo Seach Submit (former SMX) and now is also confused?

Thanks a lot

[MattCook]

Bewenched: How many pages did you have prior to the submit? Are you saying the number of pages went down? Interesting Tool.

[RobinK]

anyone else have their site show up as a subdomain when they log in and explore?

We dont and have never had a subdomain.

[vite_rts]

How do you use the feed option,

does it fail while awaiting site verification?

Every time a placed a URL txt file or an xml sitemap(google) it fails

[Angonasec]

I'd like to see this work, but as I wrote in the other thread it returns "No results" for a search of our site, despite it being in Y!, and having the site validated.

It's installed on our site using the correct tailored code but all searches produce a "No results found page".

I've emailed them to see what the problem is.

I'd like this to work, but if it doesn't it will have to come off our site.

Any news Tim?

[Bewenched]

Bewenched: How many pages did you have prior to the submit? Are you >saying the number of pages went down? Interesting Tool.

Nope .. number went up and it's been staying the same for months now. So either it was a fluke or it went up just about the same number of links (maybe a few less) I put in the file.

We normally hover right at 40k, were now up +700 with a new crawl date of last night even on pages I didn't add to the list. I only added ones that I knew were really deep. Gotta parse that file and find out which ones are new against the log files.

I better go make some coffee.

[edited by: Bewenched at 12:31 am (utc) on Aug. 11, 2006]

[Bewenched]

anyone else have their site show up as a subdomain when they log in and explore?
We dont and have never had a subdomain.

Yes I show one as well .. I assumed it was yahoo search submit. Wish there was a way to tell the urls apart.

[abates]

Now as well as hitting yahoo_authkey_(numbers).txt, Yahoo's hitting yahoo_verification_(same numbers).txt (which is, of course, 404). It doesn't say anything about this in siteexplorer!

They also seem to be checking the authkey file every few hours which seems a bit excessive.

[KenB]

They also seem to be checking the authkey file every few hours which seems a bit excessive.

Maybe in time the validating frequency will slow down. It does make sense to check the file frequently in the beginning in case someone gained illegitimate access to the server in question and the rightful owner deleted the file.