Yahoo Articles by SEO Speedwagon

June 13, 2008

Yahoo to Become Adsense Clearinghouse?

Sean saw it coming yesterday, and little more than a Month ago I thought it a Yang Threat to balance the Microsoft yin of bluster.

Yet here we have it, and have you ever read anything that made Yahoo suddenly seem more insignificant?:

If the Google partnership passes what's likely to be a rigorous review by U.S. antitrust regulators and lawmakers, Yahoo! intends to use its rival's superior search technology to display ads on its own Web site as well as those of its partners' in the United States and Canada.

Let us all give a collective search way of goodbye to the once great king.

Yahoo to Become Adsense Clearinghouse?
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June 12, 2008

Yahoo! in with Google?

As many of our readers already know, the potential deal between MSN & Yahoo! has already reached room temperature.

But what is this I see on the home page of MSNBC.com? It's an article that not only reiterates MSN losing the deal with Yahoo!, but now Yahoo! is in talks with Google on an advertising partnership agreement!!

Keep an eye on this y'all as I'm sure something will transpire sooner than later.

Yahoo! in with Google?
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May 06, 2008

Yahoo!'s WarningTo End-Users

Here I am on a beautiful Tuesday afternoon doing some searching on Yahoo! (this doesn’t happen too often I might add) and what is this I see???? A WARNING from Yahoo! telling me the following in bolded red letters at the top of page three of the SERP's "1 potentially harmful website is marked on this page." Hmmm...

I began scrolling down the page and find the following immersed in natural search results:

This is the first I've seen of it's kind and have a feeling Yahoo! is setting a new precedence for end-user security when searching their index. Personally, I think its an incredibly valuable tool to at least provide some level of insight to Yahoo! users in terms of end-user security risks when surfing Yahoo! search index and/or providing personal information to sites that may be selling your email, demographic data, etc., to third parties. The tool itself is a Beta product called "SearchScan" which is powered by McAfee. If you scroll over the mid page listing in red, a pop up occurs letting you know specific details on why the listing has been flagged by McAfee as a potentially harmful site to visit.

Brilliant play Yahoo!

My question ultimately is when will Google or MSN follow suit or will the search engines at some point take data like this and just omit these types of sites from their search results entirely?

Yahoo!'s WarningTo End-Users
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May 03, 2008

Breaking: Yang Googles Ballmer

Just when it seemed the twain might soon be making their way down the aisle, arm-in-arm, the mere spectre of Google is enough to call off the nuptials: Mashable has the goods, including Balmer's e-mail that is really more about Google than Yahoo:

We regard with particular concern your apparent planning to respond to a “hostile” bid by pursuing a new arrangement that would involve or lead to the outsourcing to Google of key paid Internet search terms offered by Yahoo! today. In our view, such an arrangement with the dominant search provider would make an acquisition of Yahoo! undesirable to us for a number of reasons:

He goes on to devote almost half of his e-mail to explaining how bad an idea Yang's Google threat is. I caught this on my Mashable feed as I began watching the original Frankenstein movie with my kids. No kidding.

Breaking: Yang Googles Ballmer
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March 04, 2008

SEO Success Factors

I was recently asked about the success factors of an SEO campaign. There are many, but let's take a look at three of what we consider the most important success factors:

1) Knowledge Is Power

It's very important for us to know what prior SEO activities have been conducted on a site. This can make or break the campaign. On a few occasions, our team of site analyzers have uncovered controversial techniques that even our client didn't know had been performed!

It's also very important for us to have access and learn from your web site analytics data. SEO is about getting the right people to your site from search engines. Your analytics data prior to SEO and after SEO is a constant gauge to see if your SEO company is traffic-focused, not just placement-focused.

Finally, the knowledge of understanding how your target audience is searching for your offerings allows an SEO best practices firm to shoot for the bullseye where visitors convert, not the outer rings of the target where visitors are "just browsing". Since the early days of SEO, this has not changed.

2) Link Popularity

With the significant weighting of link popularity in Google's algorithm, there are very few sites that can ignore link building. Now crucial to your site's success at major search engines is the continual effort of adding quality, relevant third party links to your site. Trust me, most of your competitors are doing just that.

3) Flexibility To Site Changes

We always make sure to take the temperature of potential clients as to their flexibility to make changes to their site that will make the site more search-engine-friendly. If you are considering SEO, I would suggest you rate your flexibility to site changes on a scale of 1-10. Bottom line, if you are below a 5, you may want to consider Paid Search along with Natural SEO.

SEO Success Factors
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October 19, 2007

Using Yahoo Search Assist for Keyword Research

In addition to using "typical" keyword research tools like WordTracker and Keyword Discovery, I frequently pop in to Google Suggest because I appreciate the quick interface and I like the "from the horse's mouth" approach to spotting keyword trends. While Google never really comes out and says it, I think it's defensible to suggest that the listings are ordered based on popularity. Here's a look at a Google Suggest query for [sports]:

A couple weeks ago, Yahoo announced Yahoo Search Assist, a tool similar to Google Suggest that helps refine and suggest queries based on what other people are searching for. Here is the resulting screen for a Yahoo Search Assist query for [sports]:

You should immediately see a critical difference in how the engines serve the suggestions. Google Suggest displays only those terms that begin with your search term.

Yahoo Search Assist shows terms and phrase that include your terms anywhere in the query. That's a huge improvement, and I hope Google Suggest takes a cue from that feature.

Both Google Suggest and Yahoo Search Assist contain a feature worth noting, and it can throw you if you're not paying attention. Typically, once you complete a word, that word disappears from the list of suggestions, because (I assume) the engine believes you're thinking beyond that single word. Here's a good example. At Yahoo, as you type the word vacation, you see the word vacations in the list of suggested queries:

But as soon as you completely type vacations, that term disappears from the list of suggestions:

As I said before, the same thing happens at Google. So if you typed too quickly, you might think the term "vacations" isn't popular. But nothing is further from the truth. So if you're doing quick, impromptu keyword research at either Google Suggest or Yahoo Search Assist, type slowly, because a lot can happen between keystrokes.

Using Yahoo Search Assist for Keyword Research
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September 28, 2007

The Emergence of Universal Search Engine Optimization

In May of this year, Google announced its new Universal Search System which blended traditional search results with news, video, music, images, local and book search engine portals, as well as Blogs on a single page to help users find information with greater ease. Universal Search, a new platform which represents a major shift in information display and retrieval, is causing search engine optimization companies to rethink how they conduct service offerings. So what does this mean for SEO professionals?

For those who conduct Search Engine Optimization services for clients, “Universal Search” is yet another marketing opportunity worth considering. Our industry is already known for dealing with extreme change on a monthly basis, and as a result of being able to adapt to this ever-changing market, this has enabled us to thrive in the industry. With these changes, we must re-invent or enhance our offering to meet the growing changes presented by Google in order to stay ahead of the curve. The emergence of Google’s Universal Search now forces SEO professionals to look outside the box for providing their customers with bleeding edge Internet marketing solutions.

To be able to help our clients rank in the top Google search results, we now have to look towards creating effective SEO strategies that involve RSS, news, videos, audio files, images, local and book search engine portals, and Blogs. With so many new things being displayed in Google’s search results it will be much harder to attain a top ten search engine listings for clients. However, this doesn’t mean that the world is coming to an end for SEO’ers. Nevertheless, it means that we must look towards existing Google search platforms and integrate them into a new strategy called “Universal Search Engine Optimization.”

Universal Search Engine Optimization encompasses traditional SEO (on-site & off-site) methodologies as well as combines Web 2.0 marketing tactics, i.e., RSS, Online Optimized Press Releases, Podcasts, Vodcasts, Blogs, Social Bookmarking, Social News sites, Image and Book listing optimization, as well as Local Search, that aids clients in gaining a greater market share within Google’s Universal Search results.

The following Internet marketing activities make up a large part of Universal SEO:

"Definitions in parenthesis taken from Wikipedia"

RSS -- “RSS is a family of Web feed formats used to publish frequently updated content such as blog entries, news headlines or podcasts.”

Online Optimized Press Releases -- Tailoring a company’s news in such a manner to gain greater visibility online through optimizing elements within the press release.

Podcasts -- “A podcast is a digital media file, or a series of such files, that is distributed over the Internet using syndication feeds for playback on portable media players and personal computers.”

Vodcasts -- "Video podcast (sometimes shortened to vidcast or vodcast) is a term used for the online delivery of video on demand or video clip content via Atom or RSS enclosures.”

Blogs -- “Many blogs provide commentary or news on a particular subject such as food, politics, or local news; others function as more personal online diaries. A typical blog combines text, images, and links to other blogs, web pages, and other media related to its topic.”

Social Bookmarking -- “A way for Internet users to store, organize, share, and search bookmarks of web pages. In a social bookmarking system, users save links to web pages that they want to remember and/or share.”

Social News Sites -- News aggregation (social network) sites that gain stories from community members online.

Image Optimization -- Effectively optimizing image file names, alternate text, and the utilization of photo sharing sites such as Flickr, Picasa, Photobucket, etc.

Book Listing Optimization -- Optimize Book company Web site pages to enhance placement in search engines for the titles of books for sale.

Local Search Listings -- Create local business listings and optimize Web sites to better perform amongst local search engine (Google Local, Yahoo Local, etc) listings.

To stay competitive in the ever-changing SEO industry, we need to create strategies for our clients that focus on all aspects of Universal Search. I believe this new form of search results presented by Google will open many doors for companies seeking to embrace the evolution of search.

The Emergence of Universal Search Engine Optimization
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September 18, 2007

Search Tearing Down Walls Like It's 1989

We knew it was coming and we tried to bake a cake for Maureen Dowd more than a Month ago, yet we are still surprised at how search-friendly they are being in their explanation today:

What changed, The Times said, was that many more readers started coming to the site from search engines and links on other sites instead of coming directly to NYTimes.com. These indirect readers, unable to get access to articles behind the pay wall and less likely to pay subscription fees than the more loyal direct users, were seen as opportunities for more page views and increased advertising revenue.

If you have any doubt that this is the SEO equivalent of 1989 scroll a bit further down the page for this money quote:

The Wall Street Journal, published by Dow Jones & Company, is the only major newspaper in the country to charge for access to most of its Web site, which it began doing in 1996. The Journal has nearly one million paying online readers, generating about $65 million in revenue.

Dow Jones and the company that is about to take it over, the News Corporation, are discussing whether to continue that practice, according to people briefed on those talks. Rupert Murdoch, the News Corporation chairman, has talked of the possibility of making access to The Journal free online.

Mr. Murdoch, tear down that wall!

Search Tearing Down Walls Like It's 1989
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May 08, 2007

SEO Best Practices - International or Region-Specific Sites and Domain Issues

Suggested Best Practices:

A good first question to ask is “Who exactly are we targeting?�? If you are targeting a specific country, targeting a specific language-speaking audience, or your web site copy is specifically for a country or language-specific audience, use a ccTLD (country code top level domain) that relates to your target country rather than a general .com domain. For example, a ccTLD would look like www.domain.fr, www.domain.ca, www.domain.jp, or www.domain.co.uk. Always use ccTLDs for each language of your site.

Avoid having multiple language sites on the same domain, e.g., www.domain.com for English language content and www.domain.com/fr/ for French language content.

Make sure that there is not any duplicate content on your .com and any other sites.

Make sure your pages identify what language they are in, e.g., meta http-equiv="Content-Language" content="jp"

If you cannot use a ccTLD, use a subdomain, e.g., fr.domain.com. Google views a subdomain as a separate site.

Benefits Of Best Practices:

A ccTLD communicates to search engines the focus of your site.

A ccTLD is the quickest and most accurate way to communicate regionality to the search engines.

A ccTLD assigns more weight for local search. It allows your site to be more easily included in Google Canada, Google Mexico, etc.

Search engines tend to have higher confidence and often give a ranking boost to a ccTLD site for local searches. For example, Google France may give a more favorable ranking to a France-specific (.fr) site.

FAQ:

Q: What about using subdirectories such as www.domain.com/fr/? Can we do a 301 redirect from a subdirectory to a ccTLD, e.g., from www.domain.com/fr/ to www.domain.fr?

A: From a search engine perspective, it is always best to use a ccTLD. If a ccTLD is not possible, then consider using a subdomain. We do not recommend using subdirectories for international sites or language-specific sites.

Q: What does Google say about the use of TLDs, ccTLDs, subdomains, etc.?

A: “Use TLDs. To help us serve the most appropriate version of a document, use top level domains whenever possible to handle country-specific content. We're more likely to know that www.domain.de indicates Germany-focused content, for instance, than www.domain.com/de/." (Source: Google Blog)

SEO Best Practices - International or Region-Specific Sites and Domain Issues
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April 13, 2007

Sitemaps Protocol News / SEO Humor

If you've had a backstage pass to the SEO Speedwagon for the last few months, you should know by now that we are official groupies for the Sitemaps Protocol. In fact, if we ever take SEO Speedwagon on tour, Sitemaps Protocol would open up for us.

There actually was some interesting news this week re: the Sitemap Protocol.

1. Ask.com has drank the kool-aid so you can now share your sitemap with them.

2. Although MSN isn't "...ready to consume sitemaps just yet", all three major engines announced the sitemap protocol will now include Autodiscovery.

Autodiscovery allows site owners to add a link to their sitemap within their robots.txt file. Here is what it should look like:

Sitemap: [sitemap URL here]

We highly recommend that you add this line to your robots.txt, especially since you will not have to resubmit your sitemap file when it is updated (which should be often if your site content is dynamic).

If you are a fan of the statistics, etc. provided by Google Webmaster Tools, then also be sure to submit your sitemap there. Along with statistics, you will also be able to see if there are any errors in your sitemap which can be very important, especially for large web sites (trust me.....been there).

SEO Humor:

An SEO guy walks into a bar and asks the bartender, "Can you submit a sitemap to MSN?" The bartender looks at him, scratches his head, and asks, "Why?"

Sitemaps Protocol News / SEO Humor
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December 19, 2006

It's Key To Not Remove Yahoo Authentication File

Now that Yahoo has agreed to accept the Sitemap protocol , I've been going through the process of getting client sites authenticated via Yahoo's Site Explorer so we can submit sitemap files.

To be knighted as an authenticated site by Yahoo, you have to create an authentication key file then upload it to the root of your site. Once uploaded, you can request authentication.

We're finding it takes about 24 hours to get the thumbs up or down from Yahoo.

Just a tip for any of you doing the same.....

Once you upload the authentication key file and your site is authenticated, don't remove the authentication key. Yahoo will check periodically for the presence of the key and if it's removed, your site will be unauthenticated.

It's Key To Not Remove Yahoo Authentication File
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December 14, 2006

Direct Links from the Yahoo Directory?

The Yahoo Directory has always shown direct links to the robots. It appears, temporarily anyway, that they are showing them to us, as well . . . in the Directory Listing, anyway, not the Directory Search Results.

Direct Links from the Yahoo Directory?
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November 27, 2006

Evidence of Yahoo Crawling Google Sitemaps

Given Yahoo's recent promise that it would begin to support the Google Sitemaps protocol, it's a bit anti-climactic to document evidence now, but I promised a follow-up.

Back in October, before the "big 3" officially admitted that they would read the same type of sitemap files as a benefit to site owners, I had my suspicions and ran a test to see if and when Yahoo would actually pull a URL from a Google sitemap and add it to the Yahoo index.

I created this orphan page and put it on the blog server. I added the URL to our Google Sitemap file and told Yahoo about the file via the YSE interface. Over Thanksgiving, using a text string query, I noticed that the file had been crawled by Slurp and was now appearing in the main Yahoo index:

Having been too busy to keep a close eye on it that week, I scurried over to YSE to check further and noticed that the file did indeed appear in the list of pages on our blog:

Note that the crawl date for the file - November 16 - is only a day after Yahoo announced its support for the protocol. That's impressive. I submitted the current sitemap file on November 7, and it was processed on the 8th. It's possible that my test file was crawled even before the 16th, since that's only the last crawled date - and I wasn't paying much attention to it during that week.

Regardless, hat's off to Yahoo for making good on their promise - and quickly.

Evidence of Yahoo Crawling Google Sitemaps
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November 06, 2006

An Update on Yahoo Sitemaps Optimization

Reaction to my recent post on optimizing Yahoo sitemaps has been mixed, ranging from "that's amazing" to "you're crazy and your testing methods are shoddy - that will never work!" (thanks for writing, Mom). So I'm trying to take an honest look at the actual probability that Yahoo is able to pull (and subsequently index) URLs found in a Google-style sitemaps file.

The original site I referred to in the post is still showing signs of increased indexing from Yahoo, and the sitemap file I've told Yahoo to use is the same sitemap.xml that I created for Google.

This alone, obviously, does not prove that Yahoo is pulling URLs from the sitemap.xml file. In addition, there are a few other reasons to be skeptical:

• About a month ago, in the YSE forum, the Yahoo rep ("Mr. Slurp") said flat-out, "we currently do not support Google's sitemaps protocol."

  But does that mean that Yahoo can't even open the file, or merely that it doesn't recognize and work with the various tags within the file, such as <.lastmod>, <.changefreq>, <.priority>, etc.?
  

• Following on that point, on the feed submission page, Yahoo says "For any URL (directly submitted or obtained from a feed) our crawler will extract links and find pages we have not discovered already. We will automatically detect updates on pages and remove dead links on an ongoing basis."

  So should this statement not apply to URLs such as www.site.com/sitemap.xml?
  

• When I submitted the sitemap file to Yahoo, it was "processed" within an hour of uploading and gave no indication of error or incompatibility.

  But why should I expect such an error message? Sometimes all you get is an error if the page throws a 404, but little more.

I am currently running some tests that should prove definitively whether Yahoo can (and will) extract URLs from an xml sitemap. It could take a few weeks, but I'll certainly share my results here.

An Update on Yahoo Sitemaps Optimization
Posted by erik at 11:49 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)
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October 31, 2006

Optimizing Sitemaps Feeds for Yahoo

If you're submitting sitemap feeds to Yahoo, consider using the exact same file you use for your Google feeds (often sitemap.xml or sitemap.xml.gz by default).

Until recently, I'd been using another of Yahoo's recommended formats, urllist.txt (due to its minimal file size), but I hadn't been watching the output code as closely as I should have. I'd been exporting the sitemap.xml file directly to urllist.txt.

As it turns out, this can create bloat even in a text file, because (depending on the program you use to create it), your Google sitemap.xml file contains many URLs you might not actually want to be crawled.

To clarify, I create many Google sitemap.xml files and tell Google to "check" but not "crawl" the incidental graphics files (used in design, nav, and so on). But upon export to urllist.txt, my program was simply listing these graphics files in the list to be crawled, just like all html files. That more or less tripled the size of the file, with two-thirds of the content being URLs I didn't even care about.

As a result, I deleted the reference to urllist.txt in Yahoo Site Explorer, and instead told it to fetch sitemap.xml, and within a week, the index count at Yahoo tripled. (Note that we've been working on a few other things for this site too, so I'm not necessarily claiming a 1:1 relationship here. But I know my change didn't hurt.)

Also follow this thread at YSE forums, where later, "Mr. Slurp" offers a user some keen insight into how Yahoo interprets typical "home" pages such as default.htm, etc. I guess the moral of the story is, canonicalization is in the eye of the beholder - never exclude when you can redirect.

Optimizing Sitemaps Feeds for Yahoo
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October 27, 2006

Thanks for the Solid, Danny Sullivan

Some time ago, we asked Danny Sullivan to step up with a solid. We fell kneeward with closed eyes, beseeching Danny to lead us to the pearly gates of Results Page Liberation. Well, we opened our eyes and stretched our legs, and found to our surprise, it is happening!

Yahoo Serp Persecution will soon pass. We must now consider one of the following statements to be an absolute truth:

Either Danny Sullivan heard our prayers and responded accordingly . . .

OR

There is no connection between our call to action copiously supplied with film allusion and the addition of the No Yahoo Directory Tag.

I have to tell you, we're leaning slightly to the former.

Thanks for the Solid, Danny Sullivan
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October 18, 2006

Yahoo Sidles up to Firefox

In a boldly unobtrusive move from its Passive Chap-Hiding Division, Yahoo! has sidled up to Firefox with the following banner:

Using Yahoo! from within the Firefox browser is possible! . . . Who knew?
This has Google wondering what not to do next, as they provide the start page for Firefox users.

Yahoo! plans next to unveil a banner proclaiming that spelling Yahoo on an Etch-a-Sketch is also possible! . . . Who knew?

Yahoo Sidles up to Firefox
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September 18, 2006

The Difference Between Google and Yahoo

We're asked about this all the time, so when I saw the story on the wire this morning that so well symbolized the ideological difference between the two search giants I wanted to make sure to share a few telling highlights with riders on The Wagon.

Now, clients are sick of hearing me repeat, again and again, that Google's product is relevancy. No one has ever heard me say Yahoo's product is relevancy, and I likely will never say it, unless we are suddenly cast into Superman's Bizzaro World.

Such certitude is only aided by ironic ledes like this, from the wire I mention above:

As its rivals create a bigger buzz on the Internet, Yahoo Inc. is hitting television and radio airwaves to remind people that its website remains on the cutting edge of technology and culture.

Cutting edge indeed. At least using telegrams as the delivery vehicle for such a message would have been inspired, rather than accidental, irony. Inspired irony can capture the zeitgeist they are trying to lasso with money, yet spinning that lariat requires one self-aware cowboy, indeed.

The Google antidote, in the same article?:

"Instead of worrying about branding, Google is able to spend time and money on building better algorithms to help people find information and data," said Regis McKenna, who helped steer the marketing campaigns of Apple Computer Inc. and Intel Corp.

Ah, self-awareness. Vive la différence:

As an added promotion, Yahoo will offer coupons for a free cup of coffee at Dunkin' Donuts stores to anyone who sets Yahoo.com as their home page Friday.

What besides a cup of coffeee will get you relevance?

The Difference Between Google and Yahoo
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September 13, 2006

Site Verification Headaches with Yahoo and Google Sitemaps

In the spirit of Doug's most recent post about Google Webmaster Central, I wanted to add a few notes about both it and its Sunnyvale counterpart, Yahoo Site Explorer's recently updated webmaster area.

Yahoo Site Verification. I spent about an hour this morning preparing to verify about 20 sites for a very large client. One thing that's REALLY annoying about Yahoo's site verification process is that each site requires a unique text file - complete with unique filename and unique 16-character text string within the file - uploaded to the root.

Now, of course you can't create all 20 verification files, dump them into an email message, and send them to the client for uploading, because the client won't know what file goes with what site. So I created a folder for each file and zipped all the folders into one Zip archive.

I also added an Excel sheet with columns for the site, filename, and character string, because more than once, I've sent Yahoo authentication files over and over, only to have the recipient complain that the attachment didn't make it through. Apparently, many zealous mail clients look askance at curiously named, 16-byte file attachments. With the Excel file, I had a failsafe record of each verification file's contents in case they needed to be recreated by the client.

I'm sure Yahoo has a reason for giving each user a different authentication filename AND character string for EACH site that needs to be authenticated. I'm just not sure what the reason is.

Contrast this with Google Verification. First, I have to be honest and admit that I'd verified about a half dozen sites through Google before I realized that each time the server spat out an authentication file, it was the exact same file each time. Few people understand that with Google, your unique verification file (tied to your personal Google account) is your backstage pass to any concert you want. You can view the stats for any site that hosts your verification file in its root, and a site can host verfication files for as many people as need access to the stats.

So verify one site, then keep that verification file in a place you'll remember. From then on, you don't need to go through the process of having Google spit out the same info again and again, each time you want to verify a new site. Just upload your file to the root and Verify.

Like Yahoo's verification files, Google's also suffer from Napoleon Complexes - in fact, with no recommended content at all (just unique filenames), email clients are even more suspicious of them, because at 0 bytes, they're infinitely smaller than Yahoo's 16-byte files. While Google doesn't specifically demand that your file contain text, it doesn't discriminate against files that do. So here's a tip: Add some nonsense text to your Google verification file, and I think you'll find it more easily passable through email.

Site Verification Headaches with Yahoo and Google Sitemaps
Posted by erik at 11:34 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)
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August 18, 2006

Motion Control At Yahoo! Results

Two weeks ago, I wrote about Yahoo! providing "Also Try" suggestions to the phrase "Motion Control". Back then, Yahoo! felt that I should "Also Try" searching for "Motion Control Shoes" & "Motion Control Running Shoes". What was interesting was that not a single top 30 position had anything to do with running shoes at all in both organic & PPC search results.

It comes to pass today that Yahoo! is now serving up a suggestion for "motion control systems" & "motion control shoes" as "Also Try" options for the phrase "motion control". What happened since two weeks ago that caused Yahoo! to have a change of heart on their also try suggestions? Not sure, but perhaps they have altered their search phrase suggestions to be more in-line with their organic & PPC search results.

It’s nice to see Yahoo! making little tweaks like this to be more focused on relevancy-type keyword phrase suggestions and ultimately creating a better end-user environment for their searchers.

Motion Control At Yahoo! Results
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August 10, 2006

Yahoo Redirects Site: Queries to YSE

Sometime in the last 10 hours or so, Yahoo started redirecting users (this user, at least) from search.yahoo.com to siteexplorer.search.yahoo.com when used on conjunction with a site: query at the search box:

One possible reason for this is that as I mentioned yesterday, Yahoo has really been beefing up its Site Explorer area, and it's the ideal place to run such queries.

Another reason might be to help balance the server load, although I doubt that site: queries are a serious threat to the Yahoo server farm.

In a somewhat related move, Yahoo seems to have phased out the sitedomain: command - both from a regular search box and from YSE. Is this new? I typically use site: at Yahoo, so this could have happened some time ago.

UPDATE: It looks like others (including SEW) noticed this in testing a few weeks ago. It does appear, however, that today marks more widespread implementation, as the Yahoo Search Blog has just posted a description of what sorts of queries do and do not get redirected.

Yahoo Redirects Site: Queries to YSE
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August 04, 2006

Motion Control At Yahoo! = Running Shoes?

I Don't get it. I went to Yahoo! to check on a position for a client involved in Motion Control . What did I find you ask? Yahoo! thinks I should also try looking for Motion Control Running Shoes? Are you kidding me? The entire first page of results (PPC included) doesn't have one search engine result dealing with running shoes in any way, shape or form. As a matter of fact, the entire first 3 SERPs have no indication of dealing with shoes or running shoes at all.

The question is; why does Yahoo! think an end-user that types in "motion control" is more than likely to be actually looking for "motion control shoes" or "motion control running shoes"? Well, not sure what the answer to this question is other than motion control running shoes is pretty popular these days?

Heres a solution for Yahoo! and perhaps other search engines as well- Before you recommend long-tail keyword phrases to semi-broad keyword phrases, check your own top 30 positions in both Organic search and PPC search results prior to giving "Also Try:" suggestions. The organic search results and PPC ads will say a lot in terms of relative keyword phrase extensions that would truly be relevant for end-users to also try searching with at your engine. It makes perfectly good sense to me.

Thoughts, anyone?

Motion Control At Yahoo! = Running Shoes?
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July 20, 2006

How About One More Solid, Danny Sullivan?

As we recently celebrated the liberation of the results page from ODP oppression, I couldn't help but think of a lesser-publicized instance of serp injustice.

It's the same ole story. Site owner forks out $300 and puts together a spotless title, description, and category recommendation for the Yahoo Directory submission. A week later, the site is accepted, but a few changes to the submission are apparent, namely the title, description, and category recommendation. Oh Well, right? The site is in the best directory there is. That's good enough. Site owner thinks, "Sometimes you just gotta say 'What the F@$%!"

Then site owner notices this Yahoo Directory title, which is simply his url, now occupies the spot formerly held by his most glamorous Yahoo result. Site owner thinks of the difference in clickability, and it is that, more than anything, that leads to his drinking problem.

Repeated requests for an update receive as much attention as a new Chevy Chase movie, and that's when site owner remembers that he paid $300 for this treatment! At that point, site owner goes to the window, opens it and sticks his head out and yells, "I'm as mad as hell and I'm not going to take this anymore!"

So Danny Sullivan, please do us one more solid. Be mad as hell with us. Champion NoYahoo as you did NOODP, cause, uh, no-one's gonna really be free until serp persecution ends.

How About One More Solid, Danny Sullivan?
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July 07, 2006

Yahoo! Knows What Time It Is

Being in sales, it's important to know what time zone your clients and prospects are in for appropriate timing on calls. With so many cities/states broken up into separate time zones, it can be somewhat difficult to determine what time zone they’re in for calling.

Let’s face it, you don’t want to call someone @ 8:00AM Eastern when they’re on Pacific time. So, what can you do to avoid those awkward phone calls to Pacific timers @ 5:00 AM? Well...let’s see what the search engines have to say.

Lets take a look shall we.

Google doesn't know what time it is:
http://www.google.com/search?q=provo+utah+time+zone&sourceid=mozilla-search&start=0&start=0&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&client=firefox-a&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official

MSN doesn’t know either:
http://search.msn.com/results.aspx?q=provo+utah+time+zone&sourceid=Mozilla-search

Yahoo! knows what time it is! Check it:
http://search.yahoo.com/search?p=provo+utah+time+zone&ei=UTF-8&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&fr=moz2

From what I can tell, Yahoo! is the only SE that will show you straight up what time zone a particular city/state is in and to boot, they’ll show you exactly what time it is for your time zone search in real-time! Yahoo! does this without having to have the end-user click on listings to find it unlike Google and MSN!

It’s cool tools like this that keep me from making mistakes on calling people waaaay too early and also helps distinguish one search engine from another in terms of unique tools.

Yahoo! gets a nod on this one for sure.

Yahoo! Knows What Time It Is
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June 29, 2006

Bueller?... Bueller?... Google?... Google?...

This Speedwagon Presentation of Great 80's Moments in Film has been made possible by Peculiar Google Results.

Economics Teacher: Bueller?... Bueller?...

Simone: He's sick. My best friend's sister's boyfriend's brother's girlfriend heard from this guy who knows this kid who's going with a girl who saw Ferris pass-out at 31 Flavors last night. I guess it's pretty serious.

Economics Teacher: Thank you, Simone. Google?... Google?...

Simone: Oh. My sister's boyfriend's brother's best friend's girlfriend heard from this kid who knows this girl who's going with a guy who saw Google pass-out after searching for just 3 therapy products last night. I guess Yahoo took over at that point.

Economics Teacher: Thank you, Simone.

Simone: No problem whatsoever.

Economics Teacher: MSN?... MSN?...

Simone: I totally don't think MSN is in this class.

. . . And Scene.

Special thanks to Sean Bolton for discovering this peculiar Google result and to Ben Stein and Kristy Swanson for reprising their roles as Economics Teacher and Simone, respectively.

Bueller?... Bueller?... Google?... Google?...
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June 01, 2006

Maybe There's Something To Google

I'm starting to think maybe Google is on to something. It's still pretty early in the game, but this new search engine is pretty darn good. Not only does it appear to be offering more accurate results than the others, but it gives you more accurate information without having to click.

I know these are new concepts, so just bear with me. Let's take last weekend's race in Indianapolis. Lots of people seem to be interested in that event, so there's probably lots of information across the world wide web about it. And the race just happened, so it would be pretty impressive if these search engines could already give us information about this current event. I'm not interested in visiting any sites right now, but I'd like to see which search engine would be able to tell me who won that race. See, I think in the future people will not just use search engines to find web sites, but to find information in a hurry.

Anyway, who was the [2006 Indianapolis 500 Winner]?

Google's Answer:

And the other guys:

Google has my answer above the fold (twice). Yahoo came up with the answer further down the page (6th result), and MSN did not show the winner anywhere on the first page.

Like I said, maybe there's something to this Google!

Maybe There's Something To Google
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May 15, 2006

Meet the New Yahoo, Same as the Old Yahoo

A look at the new Yahoo, which, according to ABC News we won't begin to see regularly for a few Months, makes me wonder aloud: if they wouldn't have said anything, would anyone have noticed?

Perhaps it was this talking point which had me expecting a new revolution in a search homepage:

Sunnyvale, Calif.-based Yahoo regards the latest changes as the most dramatic renovations made to its front page since the site's 1994 debut as a bare-bones directory developed by Stanford University students Jerry Yang and David Filo.

I'd say the movement from the 1996 Yahoo to the 2000 Yahoo was a far bigger leap, not to mention 2002 or the sea change of 2003. In fact, 2004, 2005, and current look a lot more like the new Yahoo heralded above as the most dramatic renovations since inception.

All of which goes to show you: with a Wayback Machine a hyperbolic talking point can be popped as easily as a balloon.

Meet the New Yahoo, Same as the Old Yahoo
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March 30, 2006

Wagon's Final Date With March Madness 2006

After a humbling 2-2 last week, the Wagon has decided to pull the plug on the Texas Update to the March Madness Algorithm. To those who bet the house based on our predictions, we will soon be opening shelters throughout the country.. Already being called the George Mason Update, our most recent dance number is guaranteed to finally get it right! That being said, please gamble at your own risk.

The March Madness Algorithm now takes the number of Yahoo backlinks pointing to the Athletic Department and divides that by student enrollment.

LSU (21,100 links / 30,564 students = .687) loses to UCLA (36,400 links / 38,000 students = .958)

George Mason (201 links / 29,728 students = .007) loses to Florida (73,400 links / 49,693 students = 1.48)

... and then Florida takes the 2006 NCAA National Championship!

This will be the last March Madness post until next season, unless of course we ace the finals, in which case you can expect to see a press release, merchandising, and a low budget film starring C. Thomas Howell.

Wagon's Final Date With March Madness 2006
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February 17, 2006

Yahoo! site index count

This is a recent discovery of mine, but perhaps not new to some of my co-workers and peers. I just recently noticed that Yahoo! now allows for webmasters to check their total page index count @ Yahoo! with the same operators that have always worked at MSN & Google: [site:www.yahoo.com]. It used to be that in order for anyone to check Yahoo!, they had to search by [domain:www.yahoo.com]. Yahoo!'s old way still works, but I like the fact they have followed the same advanced search functionality as MSN and Google. It certainly makes for checking total pages indexed at the search engines simple for all of the "Big 3".

The way to check Link Popularity @ Yahoo! still remains the same however. One still needs to check link popularity @ Yahoo! by doing the search [linkdomain:www.yahoo.com]. Perhaps at some point soon, Yahoo! will transition this advanced search functionality for checking link juice to the way MSN and Google do it: [link:www.yahoo.com]. Time will tell.

Have a great weekend, everyone!

Yahoo! site index count
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February 15, 2006

An Open Letter to Search Engines

Dear Search Engines,

Here's a word for you: Relevance. I know you have it. And I know you know people want it. But here's some difficult news. They're not getting it, because you're making it too hard for them.

I know, I know. You're trying to get the word out. You have "advanced search" pages. You have APIs. You have tabbed searches for tiered results. You have these and a ton of other features that NO ONE USES, because despite more-or-less-accurate fantasies about how important you are to the world, you refuse to understand that people, while not exactly stupid, aren't exactly as "search literate" as you need them to be.

What's that, Google? You say you're getting the word out in the world's 8th most popular blog? I'm sorry, I guess I had trouble hearing that over the din of NO ONE KNOWING WHAT A BLOG IS. That's like saying your brand of calculator is the most popular among Hyperbolic Topology Ph.D. candidates. Woohoo!

Part of this isn't your fault; it's ours. We fill your comments and trackback sections. We write article after article about search engines. We spend days telling you what we think about preferential treatment of subdomains, or the mishandling of 302s, or how to measure effectiveness of site-wide links, and you start to believe that we represent a significant portion of potential users (we don't). Even the dreaded MSM is jumping in - a sure sign of the social dissemination of your technology, right? You can't even wend your way to the Times Op/Ed section without seeing half a dozen articles about how cool search is. But don't be misled: Most of these articles are mind-numbingly shallow, and they're mostly read by people who know thrice as much as the authors themselves. Not a lot of additional reach there, unfortunately.

Here's the bottom line. The most popular searches in your very own search boxes are actual URLs. Did you hear that? PEOPLE SEARCH FOR URLs IN YOUR SEARCH FIELDS SO THEY CAN SEE THEM IN YOUR SERPs AND THEN CLICK ON THEM. Does this sound like a group of people who are looking for a way to restrict search results to a specific TLD or find out how much they weigh in a popular British/Irish format? (By the way, would you call that "13 stone 8"?)

Search engines, here is the brutal reality: you're trying to get your message out in a world where 17% of HDTV owners mistakenly believe they're watching a high-def broadcast simply because they own a high-definition television. What's the moral here? YOU CANNOT MAKE THIS STUFF TOO SIMPLE FOR PEOPLE TO UNDERSTAND.

• Spend less time posting to your official blogs and more time putting your message on tray liners at fast-food restaurants.
• Spend less time speaking at tech conferences and more time buying a few TV spots to showcase your features. (When people see something on TV, they want to try it. When they see a tiny link to it pulling them away from a comfortable place, they don't. Pontiac should not understand this more than you do, but it does.
• Spend less time catering to corrupt governments and more time creating ad inserts for Sports Illustrated or Parenting or Marie Claire or whatever publications target the users who aren't fully exploiting your capabilities. Trust me, that's just about all of them.

Your employees have spent a lot of their time creating some very cool search features. It's time that some of them spent their hours thinking of innovative ways to educate searchers. And remember, counter to your intuition, "innovative" means "less technical." Users who know how to use search engines correctly better understand engines' potential for solving problems and are even more likely to associate specific engines with relevant results. And the managerial subset of that group will really understand how important it is to have a viable search engine presence. When that happens, everybody wins.

An Open Letter to Search Engines
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January 24, 2006

Yahoo at Number 2: Strategy or Surrender?

It's probably an understatement to say that Susan Decker has had better weeks. Yahoo's Chief Financial Officer likely wasn't too happy that even though revenues increased 39% from last year, the company's stock dropped 13% when earnings fell short of forecast by one cent.

But that was just the beginning. In a