Search Engine Guide, Part 1 – Yahoo!
Yahoo! has been a major search player since the mid 90’s, surviving while rivals such as Lycos and Excite fell by the wayside. Their directory was the place to be listened online. Here, though, we deal with the Yahoo! search engine.
What’s the difference? The directory was, and is, made up of submissions from site owners or webmasters. Their search engine is a separate entity, using spiders to search the web.
The spiders catalog new sites while recording changes in the old ones. The Yahoo directory is built with manual submissions – and $299 a year to be listed. The search engine listings come from the spiders/search engine bots that travel around the web 24/7.
Here’s one way to tell the difference if you’re still confused – If you use the categories on Yahoo’s front page to ‘drill down’ to what you’re looking for, you’re using the directory. If you enter a phrase into the Search box and click the button, you’re using the Yahoo search engine. Make sense?
It is essential to be listed in the Yahoo! search engine. Their share of online searches is growing, gaining ground on the current king, Google. Though they are not a serious challenger to the crown, they have a sizable audience. It’s very likely that they will continue to make gains for the foreseeable future.
How to get listed:
Yahoo will usually find you while crawling the web. Using their Free Submission option is not a good idea. Search engines, for some reason, give an edge to sites who they ‘find’. Keep that in mind when launching a new site.
Yahoo has a controversial Pay for Placement program called Site Match. The site owner pays an annual fee of $49 for a guaranteed listing in the search engine; Plus, every time your listing is clicked on, they charge you either $.15 or $.30 (depending on your industry type).
This program can run up a large bill. For most, being ‘found’ is easily the best option to get into Yahoo.
Factors for ranking:
Yahoo still gives more weight to on-site factors than Google. Relevant content and good use of keywords on the site will give you a good ranking; It is also possible to move upward quicker than in Google.
Search Engine Guide, Part 2 – Google
Article written by Jonathan Cook
