How the Yahoo! Directory Really Ranks its Directory Listings

Last Update: Thursday, May 25, 2006.

In this article, I show you how the Yahoo! Directory ranks its listings, so you can use this knowledge to get higher rankings.

First you must understand that Yahoo! is a web directory, NOT a search engine.

So what is the difference?

Well, search engines, such as Google, index web pages by sending a spider or crawler out to the web to find, crawl and index web pages.

When a spider finds a web page, it will typically index the contents of the page's TITLE tag, the body text and sometimes the META tags.

A search engine will use the contents of the TITLE tag as the link title in the search results. The description for a link may consist of the contents of the META description tag, or excerpts from the body text.

On the other hand a web directory, such as the Yahoo! Directory, does not use spiders to find, crawl and index web pages. Instead it relies on web site owners to submit their web sites for indexing.

Here's the important part... so listen carefully! ;o)

The Yahoo! Directory will ONLY use the information submitted via its How to Suggest Your Site submission form to create the directory listing title and description. Did you catch that?

The 4 ranking factors are:

Site title
Domain name / URL
Directory category
Site description

The submission is then reviewed by a human reviewer to ensure the information submitted is appropriate. Quite often a site reviewer will edit the submitted information to fit its own editorial guidelines.

Yahoo! NEVER sends out spiders to gather information from your web site. So no amount of optimization to your web pages will have any effect on your Yahoo! Directory listing's rankings.

What this means is that the fate of your site's ranking in the Yahoo! Directory is dependent on the information you submit in its site submission form.

In addition, once your site has been accepted into the Yahoo! Directory, you are stuck with the listing title, description and ranking.

Unless there is an error in the listing title or description, or your site has changed completely, Yahoo! will NOT entertain any changes to the listing. This is straight from the horses mouth.

If your listing has an error on it, you can make a change request using Yahoo!'s How to Suggest a Change to Your Yahoo! Listing form.

Don't forget that Yahoo! charges an annually recurring fee of $299, for as long as you want your listing in their directory. For adult web sites, the fee is a whopping $600!

This is why it is essential that you get it right when you submit your site to the Yahoo! Directory. Because once you've made your submission, you have to live with your Yahoo! Directory listing for years to come.

With the Yahoo! Directory being the most popular directory on the Web, the results could play a major part on the success of your web site.

I hope that has cleared up the confusion that optimizing your web site can improve your Yahoo! directory listing rankings. It won't!

You may like to read my search engine optimization book, entitled "Search Engine Optimization Strategies."

Remember, you only have one shot at getting your Yahoo! submission right!

About The Author: Michael Wong is an internationally recognized search engine marketing expert, and the author of a leading search engine book, numerous marketing tips, and reviews of internet marketing software and ecommerce solutions.