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As you may have
recently read, Yahoo has recently renewed
its relationship with Google and will
continue to display Google search engine results at Yahoo.com. There had been
much speculation as to whether Yahoo would renew this agreement especially as
many within Yahoo believed that the Google relationship had already cannibalized
much of Yahoo's audience reach. In fact,
Nielsen/Net
Ratings recently released new search engine audience figures for the month
of August, showing Google's audience reach barely two points below that of
Yahoo's. With Yahoo already struggling to maintain dominance over MSN, it seemed
unlikely that they would renew a relationship with one of their biggest search
engine competitors, when options with Inktomi or FAST could fulfill the need
without any direct competition. However, when you look at the strength of
Google's name, power of their reputation and quality of their search engine
results, you can forgive Yahoo for concluding that maintaining the relationship
was the right thing to do. As the saying goes, "Keep you friends close, but your
enemies closer". So after months of speculation, Yahoo finally announced that they would continue their relationship with Google. The biggest surprise however, is that Yahoo has opted for a strategy that goes beyond merely maintaining the relationship. As of October 10th, Yahoo directory results and Google web pages will no longer be shown separately and will instead be combined to provide new Web Matches. These Web Matches will be the combined results of both Yahoo and Google indexes, but displayed using Yahoo's own algorithm. This combined structure moves away from the previous arrangement whereby Yahoo only displayed Google results when there were no Yahoo directory results for a particular search query. With the new Web Matches, you will no longer see the Google logo appearing in the top left of the screen and the only way you will be able to determine that a result has been drawn from the Yahoo directory, as opposed to Google, will be a link under the listing that reads "More sites about" and a red arrow graphic. This link will allow Yahoo users to click through to the Yahoo directory to view more websites within the same theme. While the new search results will use a Yahoo algorithm, initial testing has shown that this algorithm is very similar to Google's own, and in some cases it can be very difficult to see a difference between the order of Yahoo's results and those of Google. The Impact On Your Website So, what does this change mean for anyone looking for high positioning on
Yahoo? Well, the biggest question centers on the benefit of paying $299 to be
listed in the Yahoo directory. While there are Yahoo users who navigate through
the directory of human edited listings, most prefer to use the search function
to locate the product or service they are seeking. With this in mind, most
companies will be able to utilize the traffic from Yahoo without having to pay
the $299 a year that was once the only way of securing any chance of top
positioning on the Yahoo search engine results. Decisions, Decisions Yahoo has been testing the new format for their search results for a number of weeks now, and my guess is that they will continue to tweak the format a little more. The full impact of the change will not be evident for at least a few weeks. In the meantime, what strategy should a company undertake? Pay the $299 for a Yahoo directory listing or rely purely on Google? The answer depends on your budget. If your company has a restricted budget, you may wish to wait and see what benefit you receive from Yahoo simply by focusing on your free listing at Google. However, if you have the financial resources, a link in the Yahoo directory will continue to benefit your website and will remove any doubt as to whether your site will show up in the new and improved Yahoo search results. Further Reading: Yahoo Renews With Google, Changes Results Yahoo! Celebrates £18.5m Profit
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