Even the Search Engines are Bad at Optimization

Yahoo doesn't want to be a search engine any more.

I've noticed that Yahoo does that for a little while and figured that these companies must pay for it. You'd think that there would be a little more outrage against Yahoo skewing the organic results, but this is the first time I’ve ever heard anyone complain about it.

I think the lack of outrage at Yahoo's 'paid inclusion' policy is a sign that the SEO community just doesn't take Yahoo seriously anymore. Google's really the only serious player in search. MSN gets some attention because Microsoft is a big player in the software game. Ask has an overall more sympathetic image. Yahoo's just gotten stale.

I don't agree that no one takes Yahoo seriously. All they (Yahoo) are doing is allowing people to buy places in the "organic" search results more directly. These places are also for sale in Google - just not directly. On the one hand you buy text links and with the other engine you pay for search submit pro. To me it seems like you're buying rankings either way.

The way I see it, Yahoo can't compete with Google by being the same, so they have to do something different. Whether they're taking the right approach or not is hard to say, but they can't do the exact same approach as Google.

I think the lack of outrage at Yahoo's 'paid inclusion' policy is a sign that the SEO community just doesn't take Yahoo seriously anymore.

Spot on Katinka. Most business owners simply see declining Yahoo referrals in their server logs.

IMO there's nothing wrong with allowing people to buy spots in the organic results - as long as they're relevant to the search. The only way it can backfire is if the paid inclusions to the serps are not relevant. If it's allowed to get out of hand to any degree, then Yahoo! will lose market share. People will vote with where they search.

If the results are really relevant and what the users are looking for, then it can only boom Yahoo! I think that will difficult to control, but if they think they can, great for them. The people will decide if Yahoo! does a good job or not.

So by using the search submit pro, you guys dont think it will hurt you in the long run? Lets say you dont want to pay yahoo for this services anymore. I heard something about them taking you far back.??//?

Yahoo are an unloveable lot. My only banned site (ever) - not a peep from them in two years of queries about what is the problem. Same site is number four for a very competitive word across both the other search engines and now has thousands of pages of original and relevant content. While we only had 30 pages when Yahoo banned us - perhaps we were not perhaps as good a resource as our #1 Yahoo ranking at the time would have suggested - it's time to grow up and take the ban off.

But no for the weakness in Yahoo's algorithm, my client must pay forever. Don't trust them, don't like them. I've heard similar stories first hand from other affected webmasters.

Fortunately, Yahoo are a smaller and smaller piece of the pie.

Including Paid Search in organics and penalising for past use of Search Submit Pro just make a bad situation worse. Yahoo once had some very cool engineers working on custom home pages for individual users and Hotmail made Yahoo mail look brilliant - but other than that they are a pain to work with. And you still can't trust their search results, even after all these years.

Funny they can't figure out that relevance of results is everthing.

With Google going evil and just Microsoft left standing, does one sail towards Scylla or Charibdis?

It seems to me that Yahoo can do that because of how many people using their search have no idea how search really works: they don't care, they don't really see the differance between organic and paid links from SERPs.

It seems to me that Yahoo can do that because of how many people using their search have no idea how search really works: they don't care, they don't really see the difference between organic and paid links from SERPs.

Yahoo sucks donkey-di--. Period.End of discussion.

While we're at it-Let's talk about the Bullsh-- that google has been up to since March 7, 2007. WTF??? MATT. Don't they like page relevance anymore? Does CONTENT suck to them now? Google's results F------ BLOW! No one else says it but they sure are thinking it! Take it for what it's worth. I see more spam now than ever. This is NOT a spam issue. You have sites in top spots that have 30 backlinks and NO PAGE CONTENT! I can't help but think that this is a move to accomodate the big corporations whose websites suck and have NO SEO. How about some answers!!!!

I don't understand SE's at this point, Google is getting crazy, and Yahoo don't know what to do to keep up!

I think I will start with pay per click advertising, It's not good to have all his eggs in the same basket.

Anyone who is not blogging is missing out big time.

Allowing people to pay for high priority in search undermines everything about the web. This is possibly the dumbest thing I've heard of a search doing in a very, very long time and as a result I'll likely never use Yahoo again.