Yahoo Search Update January 2008

Weather Report

[engine]

Yahoo has confirmed an update is in progress for the last few days, and is still taking place.

Don't be surprised to see SERPs shifting.

[angiolo]

> Don't be surprised to see SERPs shifting.

In a niche I monitor there is a site ( a work in progress site... ) at the top for a three work phrase.

The keywords are just the site URRs.

Not a good improvement....

At the moment.....

[bwnbwn]

Right now just too much going on will let the dust settle some but I did do a couple quick searches and see yahoo is getting much much faster indexing as I launched about 4 sites 2 weeks ago indexed and ranking in both Google and Yahoo not yet in MSN.

Not to much to report as far as changes but this is early into the update

[docbird]

Quiet in here...

The merest whiff of an update in G, and I'd expect page after page of posts.

Must say I barely pay attention to Yahoo; tho just noticed one of my sites getting more visitors thro Y than G - I suspect that via a non-US Yahoo site, as my site focuses on a non-US location.

[redstorm]

I think the search result from YAHOO are much better than google, do your guys agrre with me?

[MLHmptn]

No...Yahoo's results are subpar to say the least! I would honestly say Yahoo is taking the back seat to MSN Live at this point in the game. Google flat out owns marketshare and it's not going to change any time soon!

Google is flat out synonymous with SEARCH! Yahoo is known for email and news...what else?!

[edited by: MLHmptn at 3:45 am (utc) on Jan. 24, 2008]

[tictoc]

Yahoo says every few weeks they are having a update but I never see anything big changing.. it still looks like the usual suspects.

[iwannano1]

A very few people are using yahoo.. sad but it is a true fact. Search results are quite good (noise ratio as compare to google is low) but google rules here.

Anyway I've not noticed any big change for my site.

[exposure]

Yahoo results gets worse with each update. I can't understand what their intention is over there. They should just bring back the directory approach or buy Mahalo at this point.

With layoffs potentially coming soon, I don't see them as viable any longer - and I'm disapointed to say that as I'm a long time supporter.

[Steelbank]

Exposure, I agree. It is quite a dissapointment. No telling where yahoo will go.

At this point, we run 47 different websites in various industries.

80% + search comes from google, while yahoo and msn now share about the remainder.

[exposure]

I'm actually seeing some minor improvements but its not worth spending much time on. It's really a little-too-little and a little-too-late. I stopped expecting much from them anymore. And the improvements aren't much of a help to users - the average top 30 is still full of garbage - soI don't expect Yahoo will suddenly start gaining market share back from whatever they've done.

There are plenty of SERPs on which my site should easily be top-ten material but moving from 80th to 50th isn't much of an improvement to spend much time talking about or reviewing. Too bad for the user.

[night707]

Yahoo engeneers are useless because the do not list good sites.

They will vanish like all othr wasted serps.

[Figureitout]

Does anyone know how long this update will be going on for? Yahoo has moved many of my sites from top placement to page 2 however many of my sites did not change. Does anyone know if this is final or is this update still going on.

[BillyS]

It started early last week. As of yesterday things seemed to have settled down. It looks like we might be at steady state now.

[BillyS]

It started early last week. As of yesterday things seemed to have settled down. It looks like we might be at steady state now.

[awall19]

I would love to see Yahoo at least try to compete. I feel like someone could create a search engine in a box program that had a better algo than the stuff they are pushing out.

Some starting points
- don't rank tag pages or trust links from them. Maybe don't even index them. Because I leverage wordpress.com tags it does not mean I have a site worth ranking. And no searcher wants to see a Yahoo! Pipes page or a del.icio.us links saved by one member for another member in the organic serps...how is one tag enough to be rankworthy?
- deweight the authority score component of the algorithm, or at least find a way to de-weight it on user generated content sites. I saw a user profile with a few dozen spammy backlinks ranking for a sweet term. And I saw one keyword phrase where the only non-user-generated-spam in the whole SERP were 2 wildly off topic authority sites.

[Figureitout]

Thank you for your thoughts. Now it is time to start optimization again and try not to hurt my Google Ranks on these websites.