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[dir.yahoo.com...]
Almost all of the subcategories except web hosting (of course) has not been updated for months, and the quality of the many of the existing links is questionable, and that's putting it nicely.
Only people who can afford paying $299 can enter Yahoo (excluding fan site categories and some regional listings maybe). At least they could tell this. I don't know you, but I've had enough of it. My time is valuable, and I don't want to submit a site that will never make it to the directory no matter how good it is. It is a waste of time and an insult to human intellect.
Some of the listings in the category I've been trying to submit to are so amateur looking and haven't been updated for months.
Yet my UK movie site which is updated daily and packed full of state-of-the-art features won't get listed, even though I've tried Yahoo UK's free submission method a few times over the last year.
Do affiliate links mean a site is deemed to be "commercial"? Maybe that's why Yahoo aren't accepting us...
Maybe it's dependent upon category, but I've had no problems with free listings for appropriate site. The last one I listed free took 8 days. I submit five or six a month, and have only failed with 4 sites in the last year.
Webmasterworld was also a free submission, and I don't remember exactly how long it took, but I do remember it was quick.
>Do affiliate links mean a site is deemed to be "commercial"? Maybe that's why Yahoo aren't accepting us...
It's a matter of degree, I think. If the site is deemed "commercial in nature," then you need to go with BizEx. Most of those I've had luck with have some commercial aspect to them -- Amazon affiliation, a banner or two, or informational sites which are put up by businesses -- but the non-commercial is not overpowered by the commercial.
Clearly, an online shopping site would be commercial. A patriotic news portal with a page of Amazon links to related music and books would not. The line is somewhere in between.
I have 2 religious websites - one Catholic and one which is more Protestant oriented. The Catholic one is listed very well in the Yahoo Directory, the Protestant one is not.
The topics of these websites are very different, but the website presentation, the content and graphics, the formatting and the quality of information on the sites is very similar.
And in fact the Protestant one is the better done site in my humble estimation (grin), but is not listed at all under the category in Yahoo to which I submitted it. The person at Yahoo who is in charge of this "section" of Yahoo refuses to list my site, even though there are sites in this same topic that are, on the surface, somewhat poorly done and amateurish in the extreme.
This means....that listings in Yahoo depend on who you are dealing with at Yahoo and how they feel on any particular day, and have not a great deal to do with performance standards.
This is unfortunate but a fact of Yahoo life. It is a great directory. It just doesn't really weigh a website's appeal and validity in a fair fashion.
Best wishes - Greg
Given the fact that human editors (such as those at Yahoo) are indeed human, the fact that human nature is a factor should come as no shock, even to the general public.
Although I don't think I would use the word "arbitrary," I would definitely agree that acceptance criteria probably varies from editor to editor, and that Mary's descriptions on a "good day" probably differ from Mary's descriptions on a bad day, and that Mary's descriptions probably differ from John's in general.
The general public has already been informed that Yahoo is possibly the least relevant, most exclusive, and smallest of major directories. Generally spekaing, in general, the general public doesn't really care much. They go for the recognized name.
Perhaps it is strictly luck, then, that some people can get free submissions and others cannot. Who knows?
>the fact that human nature is a factor should come as no shock, even >to the general public.
That is true. On the other hand we have dozens of laws governing corporations on what grounds they can refuse service. Religion is not one of them.
Just one good journalist needs to get her hands on this, and it would be a public nightmare for Yahoo.
To be totally honest, my site did have the honor (!) to serve someone from Yahoo, but he/she arrived from a search engine (guess which one? Google of course!) apparently while doing a research on a topic.
