Yahoo Ranks its Directory Pages Too Well in the Natural Results
It seems as if some people are disturbed that Yahoo! ranks its directory pages fairly high in the Yahoo! Search natural results. I have noticed this as well, but I can’t seem to pull up any results (at the moment) where the a Yahoo! directory category is ranking in the top 10. I am sure I will find an example in the next day or two. In the thread, there are those that feel that the directory pages do not need to be listed in the Yahoo! results. I agree.
(1) If the results are relevant, those results with Yahoo! listing have a little link under them that reads “Category: [Yahoo! Directory Category Name Link]”
(2) The directory tab is at the top of every page, if the searcher wants directory results, they can click on it.
(3) They should clearly label Yahoo! Directory results as they do with Yahoo! Local, Yahoo! News, etc at the top of the page. In fact, I would find that useful.
Do you think Yahoo! has a little clause in the code that assigns a tad more weight towards the Yahoo! Directory categories? It would be unethical, dishonest and a conflict of interest if they did. Do any of you see ODP listings next to those Yahoo! Directory listings?
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Barry Schwartz is the Editor of Search Engine Roundtable and President of RustyBrick, Inc., a Web services firm specializing in customized online technology that helps companies decrease costs and increase sales.
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1 response so far ↓
Antonescu Razvan on Jan 28, 2005 at 2:16 am
Unfortunately that’s a true fact and a clear example is if you do the following search on yahoo: “cluj airport” (without quotes). Cluj is a Romanian county.
First 2 results are from a personal old page listed in the directory, while the official page is on position 5-6.
The directories, especially old ones like DMOZ or Yahoo, I think they do more harm to the results than good. Old outdated and unupdated pages have a higher PR, just because they are old and have tons of old links.
If at this fact we add that Google keeps on sandbox all new domains while promoting outdated informations, than I think we have a sign that something must be changed.
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