Yahoo search update gets mixed reviews

Yahoo introduced changes to its search engine this week that were meant to improve the quality of search results, but the update is making some Webmasters grumpy.

The search engine updates are aimed specifically at growing the list of relevant Web sites in Yahoo's search index, said Tim Mayer, director of product management for Yahoo Search. The company is also in the midst of tweaking its search algorithm, which determines the ranking of search results, he said.

The update, which began Wednesday, is a work in progress that won't be complete for another week or two, Mayer said. He urged Webmasters to be patient until the process is complete.

"We need to ensure quality results for our users," Mayer said. "If we feel that this is a much better experience for our users, we feel it's the right thing to do."

But some Webmasters are already voicing concern about the changes in online message boards and Web logs. Some are grumbling that their sites no longer appear in search results pages. Others complain the revised engine is overrun with illegitimate results.

"Riddled with spam--worse than before--yecch," Jason Bailey wrote on Yahoo's own Web log about new search developments. "And you removed a couple of great sites of mine. I recommend a rewind to May's results. The last two rollouts have been a heyday for the (search engine results page) spammers and a disaster for many legit merchants."

"I do hope this is not the end," wrote an anonymous contributor to the WebmasterWorld.com message board. "So much spam has crept back in."

But many others say they've benefited from the changes.

"After nearly six months of just the home page indexed on one of my most recent sites, today Yahoo displays 242! This is great!" wrote another anonymous WebmasterWorld.com contributor.

Many Webmasters count on search engines to generate traffic and business for them for free. A change in the way Yahoo, Google and others rank search results can damage their livelihoods and provoke impassioned protests. For instance, WebmasterWorld.com, one of the most active message boards on the subject of search, showed more than 153 comments on the new Yahoo search engine changes, in a 16-page thread.

The volume and tone of the comments are not unusual or surprising, Yahoo's Mayer said.

"We do care about this community, and we try to keep open communication with them, he said. "But when they lose traffic, they're going to complain."

The search engine update is the third major one for Yahoo this year. The company began notifying Webmasters of significant changes this year on its Web log, Mayer said.

[Brad_S]

The devil is in the details, so don't waste your time on the small stuff.

To be a good SEO you have to roll with the punches. I have a new site that was doing great on Yahoo and today it is nowhere to be found. But these things are only temporary, a good site will always recover.

If you run a "clean" white hat SEO'd site and you get dunked by an update don't freak out and start spending hour after hour trying to figure out what went wrong; just stay calm and keep building quality web content, Yahoo will eventually float you back to the top. Rember, when it comes to SEO, the devil is in the details!

One final note, when you have a new web site you need to expect these kinds of hits. Site history and credibility are an important factor with all the 3 majors.

[Earl Benser]

Basic facts...

I don't use Yahoo - Google is much better

Friends have tried Yahoio's photo ablum or whatever Yahoo calls
it. It the worst running image display I have seen - other than
MS's 'Acrylic'. I won't use this feature again on anyone's web site.

Yahoo must have something good going for it. One of these
days, I might get interested in finding out what it is.

[ip_fresh]

Yahoo Update

Yahoo updated Yahoo! Desktop Search today to provide support for Thunderbird, the Mozilla open-source mail client. Thunderbird users on Windows can now use
Yahoo! Desktop Search (Y!DS) to search and find email and email attachments.

Duke Fan, Sr Product Manager, Search Client Team, posted about the update on the Yahoo! Search Blog : We?re excited to introduce three new improvements -

1. Support for Mozilla Thunderbird email client: Indexes all email and attachments in Thunderbird.
2. Simplified UI and tabs: Your feedback was very helpful. Please keep your comments coming either on our message board or with our feedback form
3. Reduced download size: Most of you just need to search emails, MS Office docs, PDFs and other common filetypes. So we?ve made the initial download much faster by splitting out support for the large number of less common filetypes into a separate expansion pack. You can download the free expansion pack at any time, or YDS will let you know when you?ve encountered a filetype that requires it.
(NOTE: if you had version 1.0 or 1.1 of YDS, you will still need to install the expansion pack even though the older versions included all the filetype support. Sorry for the inconvenience this time, but we?ll find a way to make this unnecessary for future upgrades.)

From the release : The winner of PC Magazine?s Editors? Choice Award, Y!DS makes it easy to search for almost anything users have on their hard drives, indexing over 200 file types which also includes emails, attachments, documents, music, images, videos, and more. Using its advantage to leverage the Yahoo! network, Y!DS also searches the address book and Yahoo! Messenger archives.

Note : Jeremy Zawodny totally blasted me last night about not linking to the post on YSearchBlog which I quoted. Here?s Jeremy?s rant :

I?d suggest linking the phrase ?posted about the update? or maybe ?on the Yahoo! Search Blog". But being in the Search business, you know all about choosing good anchor text, right?

***?! Is there not enough room for a little link with that massive AdSense unit smashing their content into a small space above the ?fold"?

No, that can?t be it. Links don?t really take up visual space. So what is it? I know they understand links?their page is full of links to their own content. Just scroll down on that page.

Loger
http://www.my-accident-injury-claim.com

[wazzledoozle]

Yes im sure that...

These "web masters" have single handedly sorted through all search results for a multitude of queries to determine that it is mostly spam :)

[Dean_Ansari]

Want accurate search results: get AnooX

Look why mess around with the machine generated search results of Yahoo or Google for the best search results? They will never be best search results because they are generated by machines only.
OTOH, AnooX search results are 1st machine generated but then augmented by the majority vote of the People, of us.
www.anoox.com
That is what I call search engine the way it should be: people powered, democratic.

[keeef1]

Yahoo are having serious internal organised crime issues. http://endmafia.com