Hitwise reports search engine traffic breakdown… Google is Killin’ it!

Google - 67.9%; Yahoo - 20.3%; Microsoft - 6.3%; Ask - 4.2%; Other - 1.4%

One of our clients has excellent exposure on Google, but on Yahoo they are virtually no where to be found. From reading the search engine forums there is a lot of talk about Yahoo penalizing sites that are optimized with SEO best practices. I somehow find this hard to believe, but what is happening when Google loves a site and Yahoo ignores it?

“Yahoo! Search ranks results according to their relevance to a particular query by analyzing the web page text, title and description accuracy as well as its source, associated links, and other unique document characteristics. ” This quotation comes directory from the Yahoo help section, and sounds pretty similar to the way Google ranks web pages. Below are some more specifics from Yahoo on how to improve search rankings:

• Think carefully of the key terms that your users will search on to find content like yours. Use those terms to guide the text and construction of your page.
• Users are more likely to click a link if the title matches their search. Choose terms for the title that match the concept of your document.
• Use a “description” meta-tag and write your description accurately and carefully. After the title, the description is the most important draw for users. Make sure the document title and description attract the interest of the user but also fit the content on your site.
• Use a “keyword” meta-tag to list key words for the document. Use a distinct list of keywords that relate to the specific page on your site instead of using one broad set of keywords for every page.
• Keep relevant text and links in HTML. Placing them in graphics or image maps means search engines can’t always search for the text, and the crawler can’t follow links to your site’s other pages. An HTML site map, with a link from your welcome page, can help make sure all your pages are crawled.
• Use ALT text for graphics. It’s good page design to accommodate text browsers or visually impaired visitors, and it helps improve the text content of your page for search purposes.
• Correspond with webmasters and other content providers and build rich linkages between related pages.
  Note: “Link farms” create links between unrelated pages for no reason except to increase page link counts. Using link farms violates Yahoo!’s Site Guidelines and does not improve your page ranking.

None of this, however, answers the questions of why a site would rank great for Google and terrible for Yahoo. So we must delve deeper. Upon further research, I have found that many are saying that Yahoo heavily favors those who pay the yearly $299 fee to be included in the Yahoo Directory. In addition, apparently Yahoo like the site-wide interlinking more than Google, so increase anchor link keywords within the site. Another claim is that Yahoo factors in click popularity to their algorithm. Well none of this informing really answers the question of why my specific client is having such difficulty with Yahoo compared to Google. In my opinion, Yahoo is a bit of a mess. There paid inclusion program flies in the face of their claimed attempts to provide the most relevant search results. In 3 years at the most Ask.com will be replacing Yahoo as number two to Google.

Sorry for not really having an answer to this conundrum. If anyone has any input, please share. Thanks!

Yahoo! recently released in beta a section of their Site Explorer that allows webmasters to specify which parameters and session IDs should not be crawl by the search engine spiders. Called “Dynamic URL Rewriting,” the new feature provides the ability for site owners to tell Yahoo about dynamic parameters that they want Yahoo to ignore. The spiders will then automatically rewrite the URL without inclusion of the parameters. This is huge for my real estate clients that can’t get rid of those pesky session IDs.

How Exactly does this tool help:

1) The Yahoo spider will crawl more efficiently by not duplicating its efforts

2) The spiders crawler capacity will grow allowing Yahoo to find and index more new content on peoples sites

3) There will be less looklihood of crawler traps being created by the massive amounts of dynamic pages

4) Rankings will improve due to reduced splintering of link juice to unwanted pages.