A Yahoo! Search Ranking Observation... Options

[Grumpus]

I've been watching this for a while now, and I still don't have a particularly good handle on everything that goes into ranking a site in the new Yahoo! There is one thing that just keeps coming out, though...

Exact Phrase Matching Is Very Important

Now, in the following example, I'm not going to go into why other pages are ranking above our listing. Rather, I'm going to look at what that particular page is the one that's showing from our site...

The search term is: <no quotes> "SEO forum"
(bear in mind that Y! results tend to move around a lot from hour to hour, term to term, so you may not get the exact same results when you try this at home).

Our site shows up as listing number 20.

Cre8asite forums. Search Engine Optimization (SEO) - Forum-Mates, How Would You Answer This Question?. [ Search Engine O
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) - Forum-Mates, How Would You Answer This Question?. The Cre8asite Forum covers expert advice on search engine optimization, usability, web design, quality ...
www.cre8asiteforums.com/viewtopic.php?t=2657 - 82k

So, why does this one specific thread rank higher than our front page for the SEO forum? Well, it's because of the proximity of "SEO" and "Forum" in the title - it's "...Optimization (SEO) - Forum-Mates..."

If you also look at the various other pages on that page, you'll see that either those words appear in that order, though not necessarily together on that page, or there's a DMOZ listing that has the word "SEO" in it.

A while back (maybe a year?) this was also an important element in getting ranked well for Google. And so, it's likely going to be important to get back to this concept if you are interested in ranking well at Yahoo...

G.

[Black_Knight]

We can definitely rule out 'themes' from the current Yahoo! algorithm.
http://search.yahoo.com/search?fr=slv1-&ei...king+techniques

Result 19 at the mo is my article on Vertical Term Vectors or Themes.

Definitely no sign of applied semantics here.

[Grumpus]

Yup. Seems to me that it's really nothing more than some balance of linkpop and keywords/terms.

G.

[Everyman]

And don't forget anchor text in external links. The Google Bomb I planted about out-of-touch executives (mentioned in another thread) shot to the top of Yahoo in days. I'm still not getting very far in Google with it.

Yahoo impresses me as doing everything the easy way, by copying Google as effortlessly as possible to move in on some lucrative market share as quickly as possible. Their goal is increased "stickiness" for all things Yahoo, so that their subscribers' eyes are kept from wandering off of the reservation. They aren't going to spend a lot of time with complex algorithms.

Heck, I'm not yet convinced that they will spend much time worrying about how thoroughly they're crawling the web. They'll spend more time worrying about how to monetize the crawling that they're forced to do, and hope to slip by "on the cheap" for the rest of it, and pray that no one notices while they're laughing all the way to the bank. By the way, there's a Yahoo Watch proxy now that makes it easier to see the SERPs.

[invader]

I'll confirm "exact phrase matching".
They are giving a bit higher priority to the title tag as well, i reckon.

[Grumpus]

There's also some anecdotal evidence starting to arise that confirms Y!'s optimization help page's declaration that the use of description and keywords metatags will help your ranking. Again, to what level it's used is up in the air, but I've seen several examples over the past couple of days to indicate that not only are the tags being read and used, but that there is at least some weight being applied to their usage, as well.

G.

[tosheroon]

Been spending a few hours researching yahoo's ranking system today so I thought i'd compare the google and yahoo rankings for the heavily bombed phrase "miserable failure". The top 5 are reasonably similar, but the number 5 result on yahoo seems to indicate that yahoo is overly fond of search phrase in body text.
Yahoo's number 5 reads:-
"All Out of Angst: Miserable Failure
... Miserable FailurePosted ... Miserable Failure. Miserable Failure. Miserable Failure. Miserable Failure. Miserable Failure. Miserable Failure. Miserable Failure. Miserable Failure. Miserable Failure"

Now thats obviously produced by a fiendishly complicated algo

[NorthStar]

I can confirm the exact phrase matching theory as well.

I also don't see any evidence of stemming being considered.

Does anyone have any insight on whether a directory listing helps or hinders? I have some sites that have Yahoo directory listings that are short and not descriptive (I inherited them) and would appear to hinder the rankings since the title and description don't use any relevant keywords BUT they still rank relatively well. Any ideas?

[Black_Knight]

Yahoo outright stated only weeks ago that it does not.

[invader]

If not precisely in rankings, or PR, but definitely in traffic.