Yahoo displays directory listings of sites

[Hungryfish]

Why does yahoo only display (directory title and description) of optimized sites.
when searching for my keyphrases, they only return the directory listing not the true <Title> <Description> tags. How can we change this?

Any comments
jb

[birdie]

They do that, because thats what they do. You can't change it unless your site is dropped from the directory.

[Marcia]

I don't know if anyone has tested it, but just because they're displaying their own directory title and description doesn't necessarily mean that's what they're using for scoring.

It can make a difference in clickthroughs, but then on the other hand for some searches the entire first 8 or 10 results are sites listed in the directory, so it can be a trade-off.

[webdesignmd]

I was on another site where there was a discussion going on about this. The theory posed by one member there was that his Yahoo Directory listing was hurting his search results in Yahoo.

I don't know about that but here is my experience with this. I'd be interested to hear what others think. I should note that my site has only been up since mid-November so I may not have given this long enough to make an accurate assessment. Anyhow, here is what I have seen:

We paid the $299 for our listing in the Yahoo directory. Our site is very well optimized (I have been a web developer for several years now) and I have worked hard at getting sites to link back to us. So far, Yahoo has picked up on quite a few of these backlinks.

Yahoo has 49 pages indexed out of roughly 300 pages on our site. For the most competitive/broad keywords, we are nowhere to be found in Yahoo (not in the top 50). For the more specific/narrow keywords we do rank within the top 3 - 5 terms (and for some terms even at #1). What I have noticed though is that Yahoo either displays:

--The information from the Yahoo directory listing.

--Information for either 1 or 2 pages that Yahoo has indexed. (The same 1 or 2 pages *every* time). None of the other pages in our site come up even though they are have been indexed by Yahoo.

We have about 300 pages on our site right now but Yahoo hardly ever displays results from those pages outside of what I mentioned above. It is either results from the directory listing or from one of two pages that seem to come up constantly. I'd hate to think that the $299 that we spent on our directory listing could actually be hurting us but I am staring to wonder..

Here is a good example. I searched on Widget X. Widget X is a fairly competitive search term. However, there is only one site that I am aware of that sells as much Widget X on their site as we do. In fact, they have a bit more of Widget X than we do but our site is optimized well enough that we should rank at the top for Widget X.

In Yahoo, Widget X brings up the aforementioned site for results #1 & #3. Result #2 is for the manufacturer of Widget X (Widget X is the domain name in this instance).

Our site has listings #4 & #5. Listing #4 is the listing from the Yahoo directory and has no mention of Widget X in it (just the generic directory listing). Listing #5 is a listing from one of the two pages that I mentioned above that pops up all the time. The only place that Widget X is mentioned on this particular page is in the left-hand navigation (text based).

Out of the 49 pages that Yahoo has indexed, Widget X comes up as #26 out of the 49 when I do a search for www.mydomainname.com in Yahoo. So, I know the Widget X page has been indexed. It is just not showing up though.

I realize that it may be soon to really tell for sure but patience is not one of my strong points. :)

[gdawg]

I am running into this same problem with a few sites. Yahoo is only displaying the Directory listing title. I think this is having a negative effect on CTR. I have tried the change request form for the directory listings, but that never works. Right now I am seriously considering cancelling my directory listing because I already have enough inbound links and that is really the main purpose for having a Yahoo directory listing.