Our site receives a very odd balance of traffic from search engines.  So far this year, the percentage of visitors from each of the major search engines is as follows:

Google: 52%
MSN: 46%
Yahoo!: 2%

Any idea why we are so low in Yahoo!?  The URL is http://www.wasatchsoftware.com, and our major keywords are 'Microsoft Open License' and 'Buy Microsoft Software', among others.  Any tips or ideas are greatly appreciated.

Also, what is your opinion about the Yahoo! Directory?  It costs about $299 to get into and I am wondering if it will have a positive impact on our Yahoo! rankings.  Thanks again.

I would never pay for the Yahoo directory.  Would it have a positive effect on your rankings?  It might have a slight effect, but I think you can do the exact same thing with simple link building.

SiteReference wrote:

I would never pay for the Yahoo directory.  Would it have a positive effect on your rankings?  It might have a slight effect, but I think you can do the exact same thing with simple link building.

Thanks!  I really appreciate the advice.  As for the difference in our Google/MSN results vs. Yahoo!, any ideas?

Hey, don't feel you are all by yourself on this discriminating situation from Yahoo. I been having the exact same problem for a while now.

The more Google and MSN like my site the farther Yahoo get from it. This month, so far, I had about 65 searches from google, 40 MSN, 3 AOL and 1 Yahoo.

In the beggining, when I first create the website 2 and a half month ago, Yahoo was indexing my site better than Google and the SERP was better too but as I kept on optimizing the site I started to get the feeling that Yahoo was walking away from my site until, finally, for about 2 weeks now I got to be number 2 for my main, single, keyword with Google and number 1 with MSN, yahoo wont even show my place for the keyword in 5 or 6 pages.

I know that Yahoo knows about the changes done to my home page because if I search for the site's title, which I have been changing a lot lately, yahoo will bring it up in second place, it will do the same for my domain name but nothing on keywords. MSN was always good to my site's pages indexing and with the SERP.

I'm really think that the optimizing for Google and MSN is working againt me with Yahoo and the search engines related to dmoz. I think dmoz, Yahoo and their friends hate my site. For opener, yahoo doesn't crawl my site anymore. It was at my place for 2 week right after opening it but for a while now it doesn't show at all.  Who knows, maybe it"s just a big case of ego and envy between robots.

Guess we are lucky that it isn't the other way around, Google is bigger than Yahoo nowdays and all we can do is wait and then one day we'll learn what's really going on with these engines.

Papoloko,

Thanks for the reply.  I guess it's somewhat comforting to know that this isn't unique to our site for whatever reason, though I hope both of our sites can take off in all the engines.  I'll certainly post here and let you know if I figure out anything about Yahoo!  Thanks again!

G'day Was.

I don't know what would make the difference but I can make some guesses which may make the basis for your research.

First of all, there seem to be two issues here:

1)  Where you are in the different search engines for your various keywords.

2)  How many people are searching for your various keywords in the different search engines.

I think there is a subtle difference. Think about it. Could it be that people who are drawn to Yahoo are not drawn to your product?


Then, it could be that for one highly searched keyword, you rank highly in Google and MSN and poorly in Yahoo. If so, this could be because of some factor on the page on which this keyword appears, perhaps other than the keyword itself, which gets a vastly different response from the different algorithms.

Maybe the number of times the keyword is repeated in a particular area of text, either many or few, has affected it's ranking in Yahoo differently than Google and MSN. Maybe it's use in alt text or anchor text or perhaps the words around it. Who knows? It could be any number of factors that have made a difference.

I think you need to do a thorough investigation of all your keywords in Overture Keyword Selector and the three search engines. You'll need a separate sheet of paper for each keyword in each search engine. Do you know how to work out the KEI?

If you find one keyword which ranks highly in Google and MSN but poorly in Yahoo, then that may be the issue.

Your task then will be to get all your keywords ranking just as highly in all three search engines and you'll make a fortune which you'll happily share with me.

Regards,
Laurie.

Laurie,

Thank you very much for the input.  You could very well be right that those who use Yahoo! are less likely to be target customers for us (IT Professionals).  Can you explain 'KEI' to me a little bit?  Sorry to sound ignorant, but I am not familiar with the acronym.  Here's to making a fortune!

G'day again Was,

I've found a couple of web sites dealing with KEI (keyword effectiveness index) and keyword choice.

Choosing the Right Keywords This site puts it quite simply with a basic graph to plot your information which will be adequate for what you need.

Keyword Effectiveness Index This site puts it very well with a more complex and reliable formula. A calculator will be handy if you use this method.

You can get the popularity of a keyword from Overture- Keyword Selector Tool I sugest you use Google for the competition number.

There's a free version of Web CEO which gives the KEI of your keywords with little effort. Web CEO

There are quite frequently posters to the forum who, in my view, would benifit from studying KEI and putting into practice what they learn.

As for the reason for the difference in traffic from one search engine to the other, I wouldn't take too much notice of the first sugestion in my previous post. It might make some difference, but not much.

I think you should look into the second reason. The links I've given should be helpful.

One thing you should look for is if there is one keyword that has a significantly higher KEI than the others. You also should see if there is one keyword that has significantly less competition than the others.

Regards,
Laurie.

Personally I would never pay to get into Yahoo directory either, but that doesn't mean you shouldn't.  You know your cost structure and margins ( at least you should ) so only you can tell if it would be worth it or not.

Fortunately I am currently 3 of 1,650,000 for "Cannibal Corpse" - I can live with that. 

Look at your stats and sales and you can decide if you should pay for inclusion or not.

I suspect that since your keywords are Microsoft centric that explains why you're doing so well with MSN search.  If I was searching for those keywords searching on yahoo would not really occur to me at all.

Maybe you should just take MSN and run with it.  It seems to be the easiest of the search engines to manipulate anyway.

Laurie and Mutilated1,

Thanks for the links and the reply.  I will certainly put KEI to use.  Also, it is probably true that people use Yahoo! less for what we do.  For the keywords I mentioned we are pretty even in all search engines except, of course, Yahoo!:

'Buy Microsoft Software':
-Yahoo!: 4 of 67,600,000
-Google: 2 of 93,100,000
-MSN: 2 of 5,085,153

'Microsoft Open License'
-Yahoo!: 16 (OUCH) of 15,500,000
-Google: 3 of 32,700,000
-MSN: 2 of 1,997,207

'Microsoft Reseller'
-Yahoo!: 33 (OUCH) of 12,000,000
-Google: 4 of 8,320,000
MSN: 6 of 971,796

Thanks again for the tips and for helping me think this through!

For some time, my problem for two of my sites has been precisely the opposite - high popularity coming from Yahoo, and for a time, MSN, but little to no traffic from Google.  A few months ago, I noticed that traffic from MSN had declined.

Last month traffic from Yahoo peaked. Now, traffic from Yahoo is declining for both sites, and the site that had received the most Yahoo traffic is suddenly receiving increased traffic from Google.  Other than standard updating of content, the most I have changed is to discover and eliminate some duplicate content issues.

For some time, I have wondered if either Yahoo's or Google's algorithms include a site's rank at the other search engine as a negative variable.  Admittedly, it was not a very serious thought, but I'm beginning to consider the idea again.

Downstrike wrote:

For some time, I have wondered if either Yahoo's or Google's algorithms include a site's rank at the other search engine as a negative variable.  Admittedly, it was not a very serious thought, but I'm beginning to consider the idea again.

Downstrike,

That's great input and certainly something to consider.  As little as we know about search algorithms, I wouldn't put it past them...

Thanks,

The answer to this problem is the fact that most people base their opinions on how the search world works based on other peoples opinions on how the search world works.

First Traffic share.

Yahoo is claiming 20-30% search volume.  Yeah but.

Yahoo now includes Overture and every search on Dogpile, mamma, Search 123 yada yada  and including ME.   I produce more than a million searches a month from my search engine and everyone of those pulls a search at Overture as well as dozens of others for the paid ad spots.

So there is just not as many people using the actual Yahoo.com to search as you might think.  When Goto.com dumped their shared search box it was HUGE marketing booboo.  Yahoo is bringing it back 2nd quarter of this year.

Yahoo went to mixing more paid ads in with their regular listing quite frankly right at the high clicked spots of the free listings they posted their paid stuff.  This is when Yahoo went from being a factor to a single digit percentage.

Being a Yahoo partner myself and even a beta partner for the new ad programs Yahoo has gotten all the way up to 12% traffic delivery but averages a 7% rate.

So 2% of Yahoo means your not buying enough ads from them they are a business not unisef and there is no traffic entitlements although some like to think that there is.  The kids who come out of college with socialize thinking these days, don't take time to wrap their minds around the fact that you can't give everyone a fair share its not real world possible.  Free land for everyone (Cum-By-Ya) GREAT who gets the beaches and who gets the swamp?

Your complaining about your swamp listings and you really want the beaches.  Beaches cost more than swamp property.  Yahoo in essence has moved the swamp property to Page 2. instead of slot 4 like msn and google and old yahoo. Allowing for more who can afford the beaches to have their toes in the water.  Thus 2% is Great be happy with it ITS FREE.

Quite frankly Yahoo has been doing the paid search longer than MSN and Yahoo(Goto.com to Overture.com to Yahoo.com)  Stock holders demand more money and i can tell you that Google and MSN will start heading down the road of more paid ads in more places as stock prices get shaky.

I suspect that once Yahoo gets its paid ad program up and running like the Google ad words program.  More free listings from Yahoo will creep in as the paid listing rev share comes from a shared market reach versus a linear one.

Secondly your topic.  Google is a nerds search engine and you talk techy on your site there are just more Nerd style searches on Google.  Plus your talk is Microsoft product so hey they are going to give you a bonus for pushing their product its just good business. Microsoft has been hand checking top site listings for some time and down ranking competitive products to theirs.

Oh I could go on forever and it may of seemed like I already did,  Back to work.

http://www.prnewsnow.com
http://www.theproductionmonkey.com

GunMuse,

I must tell you, that's great information and a great line of thought.  I can certainly see what you mean point by point.  What you mention is far from the traditional SEO thought process, and that is a great thing!  Thanks for the excellent mindset and points.

What can I say about Yahoo.....
I can tell you that the motto is NOT "Do No Evil"
I refuse to say more.