Yahoo is Testing New Algo

Very Strange Results

[textex]

Results we monitor are looking very strange. Lots of uk, au, in and other worldly destinations mixed in with spammy garbage. Hardly seeing any US sites in results at all. Anyone else seeing this?

[brinked]

I was going to make a similar thread. Very very weird results starting friday afternoon EST. My site went from #1 to #11 and all the top 10 results got changed and replaced by absolute garbage sites. A lot of the results are coming soon pages, and profile pages from social network pages filled with spam.

I should also say, the results drastically changed friday afernoon, and then today they changed again even more drastically.

[textex]

Has to be a bug. Too bizzare. I also tried searching on yahoo.co.uk and got the same results. Yahoo US mirrors Yahoo UK.

[brinked]

Traffic down 20% thanks to this bug. Hopefully it's fixed after the holiday. Is it true yahoo will soon get it's SERPS from bing? If so, when does that start?

[Webmeister]

Same here - my Yahoo results are all over the board. All my top-10 listings on Yahoo have dropped anywhere from 20-150 positions.

[Webmeister]

I hope this is not the beta rollout of the new Bing/Yahoo search algorithm. If so, it doesn't look too good for me at first glance. Let's hope it's just a holiday glitch.

[brinked]

i am getting a lot of very poor quality results. Like pages that say "we are no longer in business" and a lot of very minimal content pages like that, not even ad infested or anything, just outdated, not at all helpful pages

[Webmeister]

I'm getting results from sites in every language imaginable. It's looking like they've either been hacked or the guy at the helm is drunk and/or high.

[vphoner]

Same here, traffic down 90% in last couple of days. Today is worst yet. Not ranking on words that have ranked well for years. Any news from Yahoo on this?

[Garya]

I hope these results stick, finally all my sites have moved up and rank similar to google and bing.

[martinibuster]

It's a mess. I'm seeing inappropriate results same as textex. Some of those results aren't even in English.

[vphoner]

Very strange, over the last week and especially the last couple of days, I have lost almost all of my organic clicks from yahoo. I still see that my site is indexed and on the first page for many searches, but much lower ranked. Has anything happened recently? Have they switched to bing search? Anyone else seeing a similar fate?

[edited by: martinibuster at 3:44 am (utc) on Jul 4, 2010]
[edit reason] Added into this discussion. [/edit]

[Garya]

Don't see anything anything wrong with results for the first time they did it right.
looks like a mix of bing and google.

[flicky]

I agree... best looking Yahoo results I've seen in years.

[vphoner]

The results do not match bing at all. I also noticed some .au and .uk sites in the first page of results. Very strange indeed. I also saw tremendous robot hits today.

[ddogg]

Nothing like Bing, why would anyone think that? These results are absurd and won't last. Yahoo! is obviously testing something or updating during the holiday weekend.

[jinxed]

Very strange results from what I have just searched.

[textex]

I still see them. If this a new algo that will remain, Yahoo! is burying themselves. This is worse than when altavista rolled out the algo that was their demise in the early 2000s. I still think this is a bug. Makes no sense.

[vphoner]

This morning I checked my log file to see what keywords sent yahoo users to my site. I typed them in yahoo search and my site was not on the first couple of pages of yahoo. Strange. I can only assume that someone has a different version of yahoo when they typed in the keyword and maybe it is a rolling update. I think I am getting more clicks today than yesterday, but not many.

[textex]

I am getting normal yahoo referrals and can see normal results on one pc but another pc in the same house has these funky results. Strange...

[mromero]

This post intrigued me. Doodling around Yahoo found all our sites doing much better in contrast to Google. However noticed a glitch.

About 3 months ago we did a 301 on htaccess on a photo gallery the old version of which had a typo in the html page name. Then last week we removed the 301 believing the search engines had picked up the new page. But today noticed Yahoo still has the search pointing to the old (now removed) page giving a 404, so we quickly put up the 301 again. Anyone knows how long a 301 should stay up?

[Sgt_Kickaxe]

I'm not completely sure why but my Bing traffic shot up threefold today while Yahoo! fell off 30%. Google is still the biggest sender of traffic but Bing is at the 70% mark, I'm impressed even if that's 70% of post mayday figures.

If the falloff from Yahoo was temporary and returns I'm going to be seeing a 50/50 split between Google and Yahoo/Bing... and I'm so hoping that's the case. Relying on one major engine leaves you vulnerable to it's whims as we've all seen recently.

[frontpage]

Yahoo search results are a joke. Affiliate sites or crap like Nextag in the top five. No wonder no one uses Yahoo anymore. Bing on the other hand has relevant links at least.

[Webmeister]

Seems like all is back to normal from my end.

[Webmeister]

Spoke too soon - it's whacked out again now.

[cien]

I think we should let this monster finish getting up and dusting off. This monster being sitting for years.

[Webmeister]

Somebody shuffled the deck real good for sure - all weekend long.

[suzukik]

Yahoo Japan announces [searchblog.yahoo.co.jp] their algo update. They're using YST run by Yahoo Inc. So the update must be affecting you, too.

[Whitey]

Yahoo.uk has reverted to listings i last saw 2 years ago and no link building has been done since then. Small overall numbers, compared to Google , but i hope the gift lasts. ( it didn't before )

[rustybrick]

Pretty sure Yahoo Japan and Yahoo US are totally different algos and indexes.