Yahoo! recently said, we’re rolling out some changes to our crawling, indexing, and ranking algorithms.” Is this to the detriment of the linkless local site?
2 Sites I manage that ranked well in Yahoo! for their industry+county disappeared. Both ranked consistently #1 or #2 for those terms in Yahoo! and now neither of them is in the top 100. On Google they are on the first page, though one of them floats in and out of supplemental as it is the company’s secondary site and is not even listed in any of the IYPs.
Some of the local sites I was competing with for those terms are still there but they are older and have link support. So, I am wondering if this represents a shift in Yahoo’s thinking about local sites in the main search results. Has the move to show more results from 3rd parties in local queries been accompanied by a more fundamental algo shift that places more emphasis on authority? Aaron Wall wrote about this nearly 2 years ago. Maybe that represents the lag time in local.
Anybody else noticing any changes to their ranking in Yahoo! over the past week or so?
Will | 13-Mar-08 at 10:56 am | Permalink
I got hosed as well. I was hoping it was just a fluke in my ranking software, but upon further investigation several of my local sites went from position one to not in the top ten pages. Ouch.
So do we stop worrying about making ‘good sites’ and start worrying more about their placement in IYPs, etc? Geez…
St. Louis SEO / Local SEO Will Hanke - » Did Yahoo Screw You Over This Week? | 13-Mar-08 at 11:06 am | Permalink
[...] it looks like other people are starting to experience the same thing. [...]
MiriamEllis | 13-Mar-08 at 5:19 pm | Permalink
Shoot, guys, here’s what I see.
Client #1 has a very old site with a fair number of links, but no IYP links. They are still ranking at #5.
Client #2 has a medium-old site and very few links and is a much more competitive industry. They are now nowhere to be found in Yahoo Local unless you search for their name.
Shoot.
Miriam
Local Search Hound | 13-Mar-08 at 5:38 pm | Permalink
Thanks for weighing in… I was curious whether it was just me. In their blog, Yahoo made it sound like it may be temporary but this seems like a shift in Philosphy.
earlpearl | 18-Mar-08 at 2:31 pm | Permalink
I checked 2 businesses. One has all its high . Old site, lots of links, etc. #1 rankings remain.
For the other site, which is far newer and far fewer links it remains on the first page of Y for the terms with either city name first service 2nd or service first/city name 2nd. Haven’t seen the changes.
Dave