January 14, 2009

Reciprocal Links And Yahoo: Some Interesting Reading

Okay I would not have bothered to read Yahoo's latest patent on reciprocal links if it were not for two blog posts by Bill Slawski and David Harry. These guys thankfully can interpret patent details in a way that does not make my head spin and explode.

I mean look at the abstract of Timothy Converse et al application:

"A method for identifying reciprocal links is provided. At a particular host, the set of hosts which link to the particular host and the set of hosts to which the particular host links are determined. The intersection and union of the two sets of hosts are also determined, and the sizes of the intersection and union are calculated. The concentration of reciprocal links at the particular host is calculated based on the sizes of the intersection and union. A ratio of the intersection size to the union size is used to determine the concentration of reciprocal links. The particular host's rank in a list of ranked search results may be changed as a result of identification of a high concentration of reciprocal links. "

David gets the nod for the most entertaining read - he even includes a cartoon - while detailing how the excess reciprocal links are spotted and flagged. Explaining three way link schemes and "suspicious clusters".

Bill, on the other hand, gets the tip of the hat for his detail in simplifying various link related patents; taking the jargon and explaining it in terms even I can understand.

He notes - as does David - that:

"If the links between pages (or domains or hosts) is a small percentage of the links on each page or domain or host, the process described in this patent filing may not kick off. I say “kick off” because this is an automated process rather than a manual review at this point.

If the percentage of links is larger than than, a number of steps might be taken by the search engine.

The sites might be reviewed manually by “human investigators” or they might be examined by a program from the search engine that has been trained to look for signals of suspicious activity."

Both articles should be read, despite the fact that they address much similar ground. With their different ways of explaining by the time you are done you will have a firm grasp of the state of reciprocal links as seen by the major search engines, Yahoo in particular.

Thanks guys!

Posted by Frank Watson at 5:55 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

October 11, 2006

Weather Reports: Yahoo Search Update & Google Status Report

We received two search "weather reports" last night, the first from the Yahoo Search Blog that announced that an "index update" that has begun rolling out last night. The other from Matt Cutts blog that informed us of Google's "update on search quality/infrastructure on Google going into the fall."

Yahoo told us to expect "some changes in ranking along with shuffling of the pages that are included in the index" but based on my tracking of the search forums, either there is not enough shuffling or Yahoo isn't sending enough traffic these days for SEOs to care about it. So keep an eye out for that.

Matt Cutts basically gave a summary of what happened since his last Google weather report and what to expect in the short-term future. He mentioned Big Daddy, their crawl caching proxy, the new supplemental index, the site: command update, and much more. He also posted on smaller issues later in the night on, as a continuation to his weather report.

Posted by Barry Schwartz at 9:25 AM | Permalink

June 20, 2006

Google Sub Sub Domain Issues Clearly Visible

Threadwatch reveals some more examples of issues Google is having. They note a search on queer forum returns CraigsList 97 times out of the top 100 results. That is not all, a search on wedding forum returns about 50 of 100 results from CraigsList's site, just scroll down to number 50 and you will see.

Is CraigsList spamming? No! Is Google suffering? :) Google is clearly having issues with sub sub domains. Continued coverage of Google's public index issues.

Postscript From Danny: Comments at Threadwatch also note Yahoo has the same issue. MSN does not as badly (but that could be the result of spidering fewer pages) and Ask looks very good.

Posted by Barry Schwartz at 8:19 AM | Permalink

June 8, 2006

Alternative Ways Into Google & Yahoo

Search Engine Guide has an article named Alternative Ways to Get Into Google and About.com has an article named 8 Ways to Submit Your Site to Yahoo, so we thought it would be nice to make one summary of both.

There are many ways to get found in Google, some alternative ways include Google Video, Google Base, Google Local, Google Blog Search, and Google News. There are additional ways, of course, including Google Images, Google Finance (news/blog), Google AdWords & AdSense, and Google Coop.

There are also many ways to get found in Yahoo, the article named above lists 8 methods including; free site submission, free mobile site submission, free media content submission, Yahoo search index submission, sponsored search, product submission, travel submission, Yahoo directory submit, and Yahoo standard submission. Not listed here is Yahoo Blog Search, Yahoo News, and I am sure I am missing some basic ones.

Again, the point is, you need to think about ways to vertically creep into the search results. There are plenty of ways to drive search traffic to your site, outside of core Web search.

Posted by Barry Schwartz at 9:01 AM | Permalink

May 30, 2006

Yahoo Issues Late May 2006 Weather Report

Yahoo! announced late yesterday that they have begun an update to their Web Search index. You can expect some changes to your Yahoo! rankings over the next several days, and if you want to provide feedback, they supply a new form that you can use to do so. The form field is limited to 6 lines of text, so prepare only short commentary, but you can specify whether your issues are technical in nature, a suggestion or just general feedback.

Posted by Detlev Johnson at 6:58 AM | Permalink

April 21, 2006

Yahoo Updates Search Index

Yahoo has just announced that they updated the Yahoo Web Search index. Last time they did this was on March 28th of last month. Yahoo Product manager wrote that the updates have been "occurring more frequently; this is the result of improvements to the indexing system."

Posted by Barry Schwartz at 3:35 PM | Permalink

March 29, 2006

Yahoo Search Index Update & Increased Slurp Activity Expected

The Yahoo blog announced yesterday that there was a new index update this past weekend. You may notice changes in the search results over at Yahoo Search. In addition, you may also notice increased slurp, Yahoo's crawler, activity on your site due to this update. That is Yahoo's search weather report for this month.

Want to discuss this update with others? Join our Search Engine Watch Forums thread.

Posted by Barry Schwartz at 9:18 AM | Permalink

February 21, 2006

Getting Reincluded In Yahoo Via Paid Inclusion Tough? Try The Independent Reinclusion Forms

Rand at SEOmoz shows his frustration with Yahoo paid reinclusion. He tells a story of a client who hired him to clean up his site after being banned from Yahoo. Rand's team did just that and after using paid Sitematch program for reinclusion, the site was denied. Rand posts his conversation with a Yahoo representative, where he shows that even though the site is cleaned up, Yahoo has it on a list that doesn't allow it to be reincluded. I tend to see these posts and complaints arise weekly in various SEO forums, so this is far from a one case situation.

They won't tell Rand if there are issues with the current site, all they can say is that the site does not "meet our [Yahoo] quality guidelines requirements." For the full effect of the "absurdity" in the conversation, read the entry.

So what does one do if they are in Rand's position? First try following the reinclusion tips Danny worked up back in June of 2005. If that fails, I have reported that a fairly unknown Yahoo Second Review Request form works wonders in getting sites reincluded into Yahoo.

Posted by Barry Schwartz at 11:08 AM | Permalink

January 17, 2006

Yahoo Site Submit Out Of Action For A Month

Yahoo's been having site submit problems, as came up last month in our Search Engine Watch Forums thread Yahoo Submit Your Site Broken? I figured it was a temporary thing that would get fixed in a day or so. A month later, Barry notes that it's still not working.

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 9:52 AM | Permalink

December 15, 2005

Yahoo Dec. 2005 Update Coming

Sixth Weather Report: Yahoo! Update Tonight from Yahoo warns that an index change will be taking place tonight and provides a feedback address for anyone encountering rocky weather. Dec. '05 Yahoo! Weather Report: Update Underway! at our forums is a place to discuss.

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 9:30 AM | Permalink

November 14, 2005

Yahoo Nov. 2005 Update Part 2 Underway

Yahoo advises that it's making another index update this month. Unlike the first one, more changes are likely. See the Yahoo post for instructions on how to send feedback about any problems you might spot. Want to discuss or comment? See our Search Engine Watch Forums thread, Yahoo Nov. 2005 Update & Weather Report.

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 9:49 AM | Permalink

November 7, 2005

Yahoo Nov. 2005 Update Weather Report Issued

Google's not the only one updating. Yahoo's Tim Mayer issued a search index weather report last week saying it would be "mild and quick." Indeed, scanning a few search blogs and forums, chatter seems light about concerns. Barry has a rundown on forum discussion areas here. Since it hasn't yet been named, I dub it "Yahoo Nov. 2005 Update." How's that for catchy? Feel the urge to discuss? Yep, we have a forum thread: Yahoo Nov. 2005 Update & Weather Report.

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 3:26 PM | Permalink

September 29, 2005

Yahoo Site Explorer Live: New Way To See All Your Pages, Links

Promised over a month ago, Yahoo Site Explorer is now reality. Yahoo gives the heads-up to everyone here on its Yahoo Search Blog, and how it will show you all pages within a domain, within a particular directory of a domain, all inbound links to a domain and the ability to bulk submit (which was already live earlier and explained more in our earlier post). You can also access through a new Site Explorer API or export data for further analysis. More details also on the help page.

If you're a Search Engine Watch member, I do a through exploration of Site Explorer in this article in the members area. Check it out! Or hey, help support the site and the blog by becoming an SEW member! Below, a summary of my wish list items and observations from that members' article:

You can see all pages from all domains, one domain, or a directory/section within a domain
You can NOT pattern match to find all URLs from a domain, unfortunately
You can see all links to a specific page or a domain
You can NOT exclude your own links, very unfortunately
You can export data, but only the first 50 items, unfortunately
Search commands such as link: aren't supported, and I hope that might come
You can get a feed of your top pages, but I want a feed of backlinks to inform me of new ones that are found. Site owners deserve just as much fun as blog owners in knowing about new links to them.

Want to comment or discuss? Visit our Search Engine Watch Forums thread, Yahoo Site Explorer Now Live!

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 8:46 PM | Permalink

August 25, 2005

Yahoo Bulk Submit Now Live

Gary wrote earlier that part of the new Yahoo Site Explorer (placeholder page for now) service to come is a new bulk submit option for Yahoo. While we still wait for Site Explorer, Barry Schwartz at Search Engine Roundtable reports that the bulk submit part is now live.

It's rudimentary compared to Google Sitemaps, in that you can't prioritize pages, ping Google that you have updates or anything like that. On the other hand, there's a big, big plus in the simplicity. Just make a text file with a list of your URLs, one URL per line. Then submit the location of that file via this page. Have fun!

By the way, Google Sitemaps will also accept a text file in the same manner. So if you've done one for Google, you're set for Yahoo. Doing one for Yahoo? Then you're OK for Google.

FYI, for the "what's old is new" set, this is exactly how Infoseek worked back in 1997, except for the instant inclusion. When you gave Infoseek your list, all the URLs got in. Yahoo's service, like Google's, is merely a way to suggest that pages get crawled and added. There's no guarantee they will.

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 7:43 AM | Permalink

August 3, 2005

In the Search Engine Penalty Box?

Search engines have rules for what's acceptable—and not acceptable—for content, linking, and many other factors that are used to calculate relevance. Some guidelines are clear and public, but other policies are known only to the search engines themselves, and if you step over the line, your site may be dinged with a penalty that decreases your rankings or worse, eliminates your site from search results altogether.

Even though many of these policies are not public, observant search engine optimizers have recognized and described many tactics that can draw a penalty to web site. In today's SearchDay article, Coping with Search Engine Penalties, guest writer Marcela De Vivo describes many of these gotchas, and offers advice and guidance for dealing with penalties.

Posted by Chris Sherman at 8:00 AM | Permalink

July 29, 2005

And Now, A Yahoo Sandbox?

Debate still continues on whether Google has a "sandbox," the idea that new sites simply can't rank well for anything that perhaps their own names until a set period of time has passed. Now rumors and talk of a Yahoo sandbox have begun. Barry rounds up some forum discussions here, and Threadwatch has some talk here. We also have a forum thread here, Yahoo Sandbox?

Sadly, I find clarity in all this gets lost by the fact that "sandbox" has now become a synonym for "I don't rank well in Google." In other words, say someone was ranking well and there was an algorithm shift that made them move from the first to second page or further back.

Happens all the same. Has happened long before we had a sandbox notion at Google or elsewhere. But I've seen people say, "Oh, that's the sandbox" when it clearly does not fit the traditional sandbox notion. This type of mistaken assumption pollutes real understanding of how any Google sandbox may be working.

Sandbox - IN or OUT? at our SEW Forums has lots of background info on the Google sandbox concept and see also New Google Patent May Give Sandbox & Inner Workings Info from the blog recently.

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 9:06 AM | Permalink

April 18, 2005

Overture Becomes Yahoo Search Marketing & Comparing Listing Products At Yahoo To Google

The rebranding promised in March has happened. Overture has officially become Yahoo Search Marketing, marked by the launch of a new Yahoo Search Marketing site that lists all of Yahoo's search-related listing products.

It's a good change that ought to help new advertisers. Rather than having to explain that they need to buy "Overture" to be on Yahoo, Yahoo can now direct them to a site that retains its branding.

But with rebranding can come confusion, so I thought it would be helpful to look at all the products listed at the new site and also compare them to Google products. In particular, an email I got from a reader prompted the idea:

I am trying to find the "comparable" Yahoo program to Google AdWords. Since their rebranding of Overture last week, I'm still looking unsuccessfully for something like Precision Match, but it looks as if the program has been axed?

We've been using Google AdWords since it launched and are very happy with the format and back office (most of all the results). Is Yahoo offering a similar program? Honestly, I've read about their "Sponsored Search" and it's simply not obvious.

Meanwhile at our Search Engine Watch forums, a thread on the rebranding shows similar confusion:

I thought Overture was being renamed to Yahoo Search Marketing, but this page boasts a range of products, including Shopping, Travel, Directory, PPI & Overture (sponsored search).

The chart below gives you a side-by-side look at all the products listed on the new Yahoo site, along with some other listings areas that I thought made sense to add. If you're a Search Engine Watch member, see this extended post that provides commentary and additional advice and information about each listing area.

Listing Type Yahoo Google Web Search Listings Yahoo Submit Your Site Add Your URL To Google Web Search Paid Inclusion Search Submit Express & Search Submit Pro n/a (but advertisers can get listing support) Search Ads (Paid Placement) Sponsored Search AdWords (search targeted) Contextual Ads Content Match AdWords (content-targeted; AdSense is name for PUBLISHER program) Shopping Listings Product Submit Froogle Feed (free) Travel Listings Travel Submit n/a Directory Listings Directory Submit ODP Submit Local Search Ads Local Sponsored Search AdWords Regional & Local Targeting Local Search Listings Local Enhanced Listings & Local Listings (free) Google Local Business Center News Listings Yahoo News Submissions Google News Source Suggestion

Want to discuss the change from Overture to Yahoo? Visit our forum thread, Yahoo! Search Marketing is Released. Also check out Yahoo To Buy Overture for background on Yahoo buying Overture back in 2003, GoTo Makes Overture To New Name for the last rebranding Overture went through, that of losing it original name of GoTo back in 2001 and GoTo Sells Positions, about GoTo's launch in 1998.

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 9:48 AM | Permalink

February 11, 2005

Yahoo Tips On Crawling Issues

The Yahoo Search Blog has some webmaster tips out today: Yahoo! Search Tips for Webmasters: Saving Bandwidth. Gzip your files, and they'll unzip and save you bandwidth when crawling. Respond with the right HTTP code, and it will only download pages if there's been a change to them. Getting slammed by the Slurp crawler? Make it sip rather than slurp through the crawl-delay mechanism.

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 8:22 AM | Permalink

December 7, 2004

November 3, 2004

Questions For Yahoo Spam/Content Police?

Tim Converse manages Yahoo Search's "content classification" group. Those are the people who among other things try to automatically determine what's search engine spam. Jeremy Zawodny's about to chat with him and puts out a call on the Yahoo Search Blog for questions to raise: Questions for Tim Converse about Content Classification? So got a question? Drop by and put it in the comments.

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 8:07 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

September 20, 2004

Redirection Problems With Google, Yahoo

A month after it was raised during a session of the Search Engine Strategies show, and even longer since it was raised on various search forums, a bug allowing people to hijack listings at Google continues. Pandia has a nice summary: Spammers hijack web site listings in Google. Discussion in our forums here: MIA in Google? Google bug allows 3rd party hijacking.

Meanwhile, another long-standing problem with redirections, this time on Yahoo's side, also continues. More in our forums: Yahoo 301 Redirect indexing problem

I'm planning a longer look at both issues, for the near future.

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 9:05 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

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