Yahoo & Google Comparison

[MaxS]

One of my websites ranks #1 on Google and #11 on Yahoo for the desired phrase.

The thing is, it used to be the opposite; It ranked fairly high (#3/#4) on Yahoo, and and around #5-#10 on Google.

The current positions have been steady for about a month.

What's the difference in the algorithms? What sort of changes could I have made to cause Yahoo to lower my ranking?

Thank you!

[mark1]

I'm scratching my head right now, because I don't know whether you are kidding or...

What's the difference in the algorithms?
mmm where is the book with the instructions about the google algorithm, must be somewhere around here...

Btw, congrat for google #1 :)

[Erin]

I don't think anybody can answer that kind of question. I think the difference between #1 and #11 is probably statistically insignificant, unless of course you consistently maintain the #1 spot.

It does seem that Google tries hard to give, say, Acrobat the #1 spot no matter how hard the spammers try to get it, but for other keywords for phrases (hella kewl vid codes, for example), it doesn't seem to try so hard.

[MaxS]

I'm scratching my head right now, because I don't know whether you are kidding or...
I don't see the sarcasm in my initial post, but yes, I'm being serious.

Of course I don't expect the differences between the algorithms to be laid out, but I'm sure there are solid theories that, for example, Yahoo values X more than Google does, etc.

[Chris]

One thing that can substantially help in Yahoo is a Yahoo Directory listing.

Also Yahoo is more susceptible to spam, so while your site's score may not have dropped, you could have lost position because other people spammed their way to the top to push you down.

Finally... Yahoo is still trying to perfect their algorithm and they change it more frequently and more liberally than Google does.

[MaxS]

Interesting. I was going to buy a directory listing a few months ago, but I read an article that said not to do it if you already rank high. At the time, I was #3-4. Right now I'm #9.

Maybe I'll give it a shot...

[rpanella]

My main site ranks well in Google and always has, but it has never ranked in Yahoo. It shows like 17 pages indexed vs 100k+ in Google, and searching for the name of the site brings up other sites that link to me with mine no where to be found. I have emailed them before and they said there is no ban or penalty, and I added a sitemap with a lot of pages to their Site Explorer thing but it has made no difference.

I thought about getting a directory listing to see if it changed anything, but I don't think it would help much since another site I got a listing with didn't get indexed very well in Yahoo either. Also the site that is not indexed has 6 subpages listed in the directory that were added naturally by their editors without being submitted, and they don't seem to help. (its been like this for years btw) Anyone else ever had a problem like this?
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[izwar]

i hear that yahoo is more about onpage optimization then google.

[ZigE]

Hmm.. personally, I've noticed a large jump for my site on yahoo, in the past week. Which did involve a bit of onpage optimization, & fixing a slight internal linking problem, which I think might have caused it. But you never know.

[rpanella]

I contacted Yahoo and they told me my site might not meet their quality guidelines, but I could submit a request for them to review it and explain the changes. The only reason it might not meet them is due to the fact that the same content can be found on many other sites. So I guess I need to try to convince them mine is better somehow.

Interestingly I checked a number of other competing sites with similar content and it seems like all are indexed in Google and about half seem to have the same problem I have and not be indexed in Yahoo at all. Funny thing is some of the bigger and what I would consider more "authoritative" sites seemed to be banned from Yahoo as well so I'm not sure how they make these decisions.

From the research I've done into this, it seems Google will still index duplicate content but then filters results based on it, whereas Yahoo will simply not index a site in the first place if it suspects duplicate content.
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[Kyle]

I understand if you don't want to, but sharing your site may help us give you ideas to make the content less dupe'ish.

[andyf]

SE’s always tries to give unique and fresh content results so if they found any site having stolen contents they don’t much credits for such sites resulting in ranking.

[rpanella]

The content is not exactly stolen, think of it like Chris' literature site where the same book texts can be found on many sites since its all public domain, or a video game cheats site that might have mostly the same codes.

I know duplicate content is definately a problem, the point I was trying to make is when looking into which sites Yahoo indexes, it seems they only index about half the sites in this area, and from what I saw a lot of the sites that were banned were some of the top sites, both age wise, PR and backlink wise, as well as popularity. Many fairly new sites seem to be fully indexed.
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