Yahoo! Search After April 15, 2004

As any current/former subscriber to Inktomi knows, Yahoo! planned to stop using Inktomi's old database on April 15, 2004. The idea was to switch over to Overture Site Match results, along with free results from their own search spider. Current and former Inktomi subscribers have been receiving emails for several weeks warning them that their current Yahoo! rankings would expire on April 15, unless they upgraded to Site Match.

Not surprisingly, this has led to a lot of curiosity and no small amount of concern about what would happen to some sites. Some sites that had been relatively anonymous found newfound popularity, and were really enjoying that traffic. Would that disappear after April 15?

Another concern was how Yahoo! would set up their new algorithm. Although Yahoo! representatives in several forums stated that they would not give preferential weight to the Site Match results, I'm not the only one who wondered just how that would work out. After all, Site Match, although cheaper than traditional PPC, is not exactly inexpensive, and is well beyond the budget of many companies. Ideally, they could attain great rankings without having to pay for them, if the spider viewed their site kindly. However, if that is the case, then what motivation do people have to pay for Site Match? I sympathize: If I were paying Site Match fees and saw free sites ranking higher than mine, I wouldn't be a happy customer, and I certainly wouldn't feel that was money well spent.

Several of our clients had benefitted from increased rankings, and many of these same clients cannot afford to upgrade to Site Match at this time, so I watched nervously as April 15th came and went. Right now, I have to say I'm not seeing a whole lot of action, although I have no doubt that Yahoo! fulfilled their promise and has switched listings. Customers have called to ask me about this, and ask me what my take is on Yahoo!'s new algorithm.

Although an SEO professional is not supposed to say this, right now I'm just not sure what factors they are using and how they are weighting them. I'm certainly doing my best to sort it out. I can say definitely that right now, free sites are still enjoying some nice listings. Whatever the long-term plans, Site Match right now does not seem to have universal dominance. The current rankings seem to combine those from the Yahoo! Directory with some Site Match and some spidered results, although at this time, it's a bit tricky to tell which are Site Match and which aren't. On the other hand, some sites which have decent Alexa rankings and decent Google PageRank don't seem to be ranking very highly.

All that means is that it will take a lot more time than I have currently invested to figure out what the future will hold for Yahoo! rankings! For now, it seems that Yahoo!'s latest big change is causing far less of a stir in SEO than some of the recent Google re-indexings. We'll be working hard to figure out the best approach for our clients, and keeping our eyes wide open for any new developments.