Directory Listing Changed Without Asking

[JEC]

Hello all. This is my first post on the Yahoo side of the forum.

I have a question regarding changing your listing in the Yahoo Directory. Up until about a year ago we were listed in the directory with our main keywords "background checks" in the description. That helped us maintain a fairly good placement on at least page 2 of Yahoo. However, about a year ago I noticed that when we searched for our site using those keywords we are way down on page 6 or so and the description, which is pulling right out of the directory, now says "background searches" instead of "background checks." We didn't ask for this to change. I have requested at least 3 times for them to change it back to "background checks" only to be ignored. I know their policy states to please not include a listing full of keywords. This is only two words and it actually is a legitimate sentence that describes what we do, wheras "background searches" is not as intuitive.

My main concern is this, all that is needed to submit a directory listing review and change is the email address of the person that submitted it originally. Well, that happens to be one of the owners of the business, who is well known by all of our competitors. From what I see, what would stop them from attempting to have Yahoo change our directory listing? If they know his address, and they do, they could easily submit some new paragraph of text and knock us down in the listing. I know these requests are checked and verified by hand, so what is to keep a Yahoo rep from knowing that we didn't submit that request given that they only ask for the original email address?

Has anyone else seen this happen and wondered why? I'm not saying that we have been sabotaged, but I can't help but wonder. And, now I can't get it back how it was.

TIA,

JEC

[JEC]

I must be the only person that has experienced this. Seems odd, but maybe it was a fluke to begin with. I guess I'll never know.

By way of update, Yahoo did finally listen to my emails and did in fact change my listing back to what it was before. It took over a year and quite a few proddings, but they did it. The trick now is for it to stay that way. If it should happen to change again, I'll know someone has got it in for me. I suppose I should be flattered that they feel so intimidated by my site to try and knock me off. :p

Now if it will just come back up in the rankings.;)

JEC

[Anthony Parsons]

Thats good news. Most directories contain within there TOS they may change a listing at anytime without notice, Yahoo is no exclusion to this.

[JEC]

Thats good news. Most directories contain within there TOS they may change a listing at anytime without notice, Yahoo is no exclusion to this.

Yes, and I understand that they could very well do that and I do see reasons why they may do that for misuse of trademarked words or foul language or something. My main concern was why would they change the content of the directory listing and make it less relevant to my specific industry? It's a huge keyword for us and aren't they trying to make it easier for us to be found? It just didn't make sense.

I was more curious to see if anyone had any thoughts about a competitor sabotaging me in that respect? I didn't ask for it to be changed. It just changed on it's own, suspiciously. And all you need to request the change is the original submission email address, which can easily be obtained from our website. Also, if Yahoo felt it needed to be changed and did it on their own back then, why did they finally change it back for me when I requested? Did I finally just squeak enough to get the grease? Any thoughts?

JEC

[JEC]

Okay, more strangeness afoot. While I did see that the directory listing had been changed last week, it appears that my search results are showing up incorrectly again. I noticed this on Monday, and it is still that way today. The actual directory listing appears to be correct. It's the search results that are back to the old listing.

I suppose that like most of the search engines, Yahoo must have quite a few datacenters to handle the load of searches. Is it possible that when I saw the update last week, a few days in a row, that it my results were coming from one or two particular datacenters only and that this week I'm receiving results from a different one that has not been updated yet?

Does anyone have any idea about this?

JEC