Duplicate Content: Can Yahoo Search Index ‘Weather Report’ Be Specific?

It’s good that Yahoo! provides everyone a hint that some change is brewing over its search algorithms.

But that’s about it. Every single update posted on its Yahoo! Search blog about the ‘weather report’, loosely referring to Yahoo’s search index update, will mention a generic paragraph. Just like the latest update dated 7th of April 2009:

We’ll be rolling out some changes to our crawling, indexing and ranking algorithms over the next few days and expect the update will be completed soon. As you know, throughout this process you may see some ranking changes and page shuffling in the index.

That’s the same as the Feb 27th and Nov 21st 2008 updates. Sorry folks, that’s how far Yahoo! will share. At least it makes confirmation, unlike Google.

23 Signs You Need A Break from Search Marketing

Call me a copycat but I am inspired to do my version after I saw the 21 signs you need a break from SEO by Small Business SEM.

You think you’ve got too much search engine optimization/marketing (SEO/SEM) on your mind? Take the following survey honestly to gauge if you need a break from SEM. All items are answerable by Yes or No.

Continue reading 23 Signs You Need A Break from Search Marketing

1. You mention the acronyms SEO and SEM half the time you spent on a prospect or a client.
2. You keep on trying to get a reputable domain name that contains “seo”, “searchengine”, “search” or “sem” after several failed attempts.
3. You spend 20% of your day reading SEOMoz, SERoundtable, Search Engine Land, SEO Book and Search Engine Watch.

Introducing Yahoo! Robots-Nocontent Feature

Yahoo! has introduced a new feature that will help webmasters specify what sections of a web page should not be indexed.

In addition to using the traditional robots.txt file that instructs search engine robots what pages to skip crawling, this new directive from Yahoo! allows webmasters to use the “robots-nocontent” on tags such as <p>, <div>, <span> and other tags related to block content.

class=”robots-nocontent”

Examples are the following:

<p class=”robots-nocontent”>Any piece of content I don’t want to be indexed.</p>

<span class=”robots-nocontent”>Another piece of content I don’t want to be indexed.</span>

<div class=”robots-nocontent”>Yet, another piece of content I don’t want to be indexed.</div>

If our tag already has a “class” attribute, we can use the following syntax:

Continue reading Introducing Yahoo! Robots-Nocontent Feature

Moving Yahoo! Slurp to crawl.yahoo.net

Yahoo’s search crawler Slurp will be moving from its previously identified address at Inktomi to crawl.yahoo.net. This makes Slurp more identifiable with Yahoo! than as a property of a subsidiary. I don’t think there are other changes that need to be done by webmasters apart from adding crawl.yahoo.net in the list of domains to get access to networks (although I still made sure by asking Priyank Garg, Yahoo! Product Manager for Search, regarding it).

The bigger news though, should be about Yahoo! announcing it’s “infinity and beyond” unlimited free email disk storage.

More at Yahoo! Search blog.

Way to go, Yahoo!

Five Best-Practices at Yahoo! Search Marketing

Most users have seen how Yahoo! Search Marketing’s upgrade looks like. A new ranking model baptized “Panama” with special focus on changing the way ads are ranked. From the traditional, cost-per-click-dependent structure, quality of ads is now emphasized so that a lower CPC keyword can rank higher than a more pricey one, if its ads are more suitable for a keyword search.

Sounds simple and to me it sounds like empowering the conservative or resource-deprived advertisers. It is reasonable simply because the way click fraud is being handled appears far from finding a long-lasting solution.

With this launch, Yahoo! is happy to spread the word by providing tips to advertisers with explanations:

Continue reading Five Best-Practices at Yahoo! Search Marketing

• Include keywords in your ad (use our Insert Keyword feature).