Yahoo Weather Report

Search Update July 23, 2007

[Jimville]

Yahoo announced a search update on their Search Blog [ysearchblog.com] yesterday.

[edited by: martinibuster at 5:41 pm (utc) on July 23, 2007]
[edit reason] Added link to the Yahoo Search Blog. [/edit]

[lgn1]

From what I can decipher from the latest update:

a) weight for age of site has increased
b) weight for directory listings have decreased

Any thoughts?

[martinibuster]

Well, the SERPs look great in some places. But one search I found a single site dominating five of the top ten with it's subdomains. :(

[rogerd]

Is it just me, or is Wikipedia even more prominent than in the past?

[idolw]

heh, one of my sites took 3 out of top 10 positions for a very popular general travel term in English.
Looks like I do like $hit :)

[BillyS]

I thought I was getting more traffic (20% increase) from this update but things seem to have reverted back to more normal levels.

[carguy84]

Yawhoo? ;)

I see no changes in my sector yet. It can only get better so I'll watch intently :).

[new_seo]

From what I can decipher from the latest update:

a) weight for age of site has increased
b) weight for directory listings have decreased

Any thoughts?

I think fresh and quality content is also a factor.
Btw,I also not finding any changes in SERP.

[marketingmagic]

<rant>I don't want to hear about another Yahoo "update" until they actually update. God they don't have a clue over there. They need to fire all the useless engineers (and I use the term loosely) over there and actually get some people that have a clue about search. </end rant>

[goodroi]

after reading yahoo's blog which said "some changes to our fresh web data and crawling" i wonder how this will impact blogs and newer sites. as the internet continues to grow it does become more of an issue to be able to index new pages for fads and still keep the evergreen content in harmony.

hopefully this update will help yahoo keep there index fresh and avoid the issues their competitors face which make many site wait months before ranking.

ps my site is not #1 for every keyword so the update must suck, j/k ypete :)

[justgowithit]

Is it just me, or is Wikipedia even more prominent than in the past?

Yup, I can see a big difference.

..... or perhaps I'm so used to seeing it in the SERPs I'm just numb.

[randle]

actually get some people that have a clue about search.

You hit the nail on the head. They keep making all these personnel changes in other sectors but they need to grasp the fact they have to dramatically improve their search results. Do that, and all sorts of goods things will happen. Just ask the folks at Google.

This “update” is just one more in a long line of them that never results in marked improvement in their algorithm.

Big, sweeping changes, top to bottom have been needed for a long time now.

[supafresh]

No major movement at all for my sector of search. gonna keep an eye on this since they say its going to take till the weekend.

[trakkerguy]

they say its going to take till the weekend.

Actually, they posted the report last thursday and said they update was already happening, and would be finished by this past weekend. Is already done...

I saw some improvement in 1 site I'd gotten many new backlinks for, but no change in much else.

[zeus]

i still can not use yahoo for anything be cause there is missing a lot of sites in the index.

[weeks]

Is it just me, or is Wikipedia even more prominent than in the past?

No, it's not just you. But, to be fair, Wikipedia makes a certain amount of sense in the search terms I follow. Still, I think most searchers would like our site better than what they find on Wikipedia. But, we need to improve.

[synergy]

I see *no* changes from this update. Come to think of it, I haven't seen a change in the keyword rankings I follow in almost 2 years. Yup thats right every update has not moved my category one bit.

[wruppert]

I saw an improvement in my local real estate related searches. Some of the really bad serps are gone. The results have improved from insanely weird to not very good.

[zjacob]

Y! search is becoming more and more irrelevant.

Referrals from them are a non-issue, and their crawlers seem to make a lot of visits but that isn't reflected in the way they index pages, especially in terms of pages indexed.

[followgreg]

I did a little test a couple of days after this update: updated the homepage on one site with more relevant content.

Results: Yahoo has completely demoted the site which ranked on page 1 for many keywords. Why? well in my opinion they just can't process the data...

In the meantime Google and MSN results were stable, which SHOULD be the case since all keywords kept placement and density and no backlink was modified nor the internal structure of the site changed.

Yahoo has definetely a LOT to learn, maybe even from MSN (which is not perfect for the least).

And once again they've included some junk in their directory, junk being translated as authority in SERP's.
They should change their staff as well.

BTW their directory is mostly gone supplemental in Google, they should ask for reinclusion :)))

"traffic from Y! is a non-issue" >> I don't agree, although I don't really pay attention to such a low volume it generates its part of the profit on some of our sites.

[glenng]

Finally seeing changes in the serps for my area. I do like the results, but will wait to see what the final outcome is.

[textex]

Seeing some more changes that look really bad. A major step backwards.

[supafresh]

this is the Worst Update in Yahoo yet! I dont like this at all.

[textex]

I think (hope) that this newest change reverts back to the original update. What I am seeing today, I saw for a few hours last week.

Although the current update is not the greatest, it is much better than what I am seeing today. The top ten for some competetive terms are flooded with suspended free hosting accounts.

[Huntster]

Trying to figure out Yahoo is a waste of time. Thankfully, their ineptness can work to your advantage. I have so many crummy pages that come up high and great pages that don't - that I try to use that to my advantage on Google and Yahoo respectively.

If I am ever searching for something myself - I never use Yahoo. I just don't trust the results.

[supafresh]

Can you say roll back boys and girls?

[glenng]

No can't say a roll back - my site for its kw phrases is showing higher than it has in over a year. Just keeping my fingers crossed that this sticks.

[dfbfloyd]

I noticed something strange with our listings over the last two weeks. We had an organic listing at #7 which moved to #3. However the listing at #3 seems to be generated by our PPC campaign with business.com.