History
At the time of writing Yahoo
is the most popular search engine on the Web and some magazine articles
have claimed up to 70% of a site's hits are through you being located Yahoo.
Yahoo is one of the few hierarchical search engines as not only can you
type in keywords for a Yahoo search, you can also explore its database
uses categories.
Yahoo is also a member of
the 'Fortunate Five' search engines accessible from the Netscape web site.
Categories
Yahoo's home page has ten
categories -- Entertainment, Business, etc. - and by choosing one you receive
a list of sub-categories, each branching into even more sub-categories,
eventually displaying a list of web sites.
When you submit a URL to
Yahoo you need to choose the category you think fits your site. You then
include a paragraph description of your site and the title. This information
is processed by a person, not a robot or a spider.
Someone from Yahoo will inspect
your submission and it is normal for them to shift you to a different category
if they feel that is more appropriate. Or they can condense your description. Yahoo search results are returned ordered by category, so if your site is in the category 'Films'
it will be shown before any in the category 'Regional', for instance. So
be sure to select a category that comes close to the top of Yahoo's hierarchical
structure.
Keywords
When doing Yahoo keyword
searches the title and description of your web site are the two primary
pieces of text that are used as points of reference. Your web site's html
is totally ignored. For this reason it is wise to choose a title that includes
keywords. Your description should also
be carefully chosen, so keep it short to avoid editing and include only
the most descriptive keywords for your site.
You should also consider
submitting not only your home page but also some of your submerges as Yahoo
limits the number of keywords associated with your site. This will widen
your exposure as well as increasing the total number of keywords your site
matches.
Meta Tag
Yahoo neither supports nor
recognizes the meta tag.
Optimization
These are ways you can optimize
your Web Site for Yahoo searches:
- Choose your category wisely
when submitting and pick categories close to the top of Yahoo's hierarchical
structure
- Include keywords in your title
- Your description may be edited
so choose it with care
- Submit more than one web page
to Yahoo as this helps to maximize the number of keywords that match your
site.
Summary
- Yahoo is the most popular search
engine
- Yahoo is hierarchical
- Yahoo has limited size descriptions
- Yahoo uses humans not robots
or spiders
- Yahoo ignores text in your web
site
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