Yahoo! Initial Rankings

Does link popularity play a big role?

[haxorize]

My Yahoo! submission was approved and added to the index today, but there's one problem: I have terrible rankings!

But what baffles me is that my title/description was perfect. It wasn't edited at all. I was in the correct category, too. I thought for sure I would have good rankings. All my major keywords are in the description, but when I search for them (in the "Web Sites"), I'm coming up at the bottom of the SERPs.

I'm thinking this could be related to link popularity. I have a PR1 in Google, and that's because I was indexed on the tail-end of the last update with no links pointing to it. The site was optimized completely for Google ... themes and all. But, like I said, there are virtually no incoming links yet.

I also noticed that the sites close to me in the Yahoo! rankings all had PR1-3, yet the top results were all PR6-7. It sounds to me that Yahoo! is putting more of an emphasis on link pop.

PM me if you want the site info to see what I'm talking about.

[jaytierney]

Link popularity does play a role, but don't sweat it until your site has been listed in yahoo for at least a month or two - it needs time to "mature" (other SE's need to pick up on your listing in Yahoo, which will in turn improve your rank and so on and so on). How exactly link popularity & PR play into searches within the Yahoo directory listings is a bit fuzzy still (and may be irrelevant as soon as tomorrow), but this may help you or put you at ease for the time being: I have a great listing and am ahead of sites that have five times as many links as me. I think a decent PR (depending on the particular niche) is a prerequisite, at which point your actual yahoo listing will take over for final placemen

[2_much]

Well said JayTierney!