No Yahoo Directory Links on New Yahoo Homepage?
Yahoo is testing a new design for their homepage which is quite sleek, tabbed, and interactive – but does not include links to the Yahoo Directory, which is the foundation (or was the foundation) of Yahoo and its human edited differentiation from Google. The end of directory access via links from the Yahoo homepage does not mean that they are dumping the human edited version of web search, as Yahoo Answers, MyWeb, Ratings, Reviews and tags are all created or edited by humans and having more and more influence on all around search results.
Some questions are arising about whether or not the value of a Yahoo Directory (Yahoo Category) listing will drop over time with Yahoo turning to the Web 2.0 human edited model and without direct link access to those directory listings.
Debbie V asks on V7N Webmaster Forum : “The new Yahoo home page is missing any links to their directory. Makes me hesitant to pay for a listing. Any one else notice this?”
Something I have noticed is Yahoo’s dependency on its directory changing over the years. Best illustrated in a comparison between the first Yahoo homepage in 1994:
And the new Yahoo homepage design:
Currently MSN is also testing a new home page.
http://beta.msn.com/
The new Yahoo homepage does not show up on Firefox. It appears to only show up on IE. The Firefox browser shows the ‘old’ one and not the one they are testing.
I actually remember the 1994 version of the Yahoo! page. I spent so much time navigating from category to category, exploring the differences that arose if I explored a topic through a different angle. Wow, blast from the past!
I also have fond memories of my first visit to Yahoo.com, which was my first experience on the Internet.
Here is a working model of that original Yahoo page:
http://web.bilkent.edu.tr/History/yahoo/