What Yahoo! Doesn’t Want

I have read a number of conspiracy theories detailing what will or will not impact one’s ranking or possible delisting in Yahoo!. I have found the most reliable source to be at the source with Yahoo! Help. The help site gives some basic guidelines that any webmaster should note and follow when constructing their site.

Yahoo! details what they considers to “unwanted” sites and this is important because it does seem as though Yahoo! plans to penalize sites using easy to generate content (data feed driven sites), sites with the same content (merchandising sites), and sites specifically engineered to work with spiders and not humans.

Some, but not all, examples of the more common types of pages that Yahoo! does not want include:

- Pages that harm accuracy, diversity or relevance of search results
- Pages dedicated to directing the user to another page
- Pages that have substantially the same content as other pages
- Sites with numerous, unnecessary virtual hostnames
- Pages in great quantity, automatically generated or of little value
- Pages using methods to artificially inflate search engine ranking
- The use of text that is hidden from the user
- Pages that give the search engine different content than what the end-user sees
- Excessively cross-linking sites to inflate a site’s apparent popularity
- Pages built primarily for the search engines
- Misuse of competitor names
- Multiple sites offering the same content
- Pages that use excessive pop-ups, interfering with user navigation
- Pages that seem deceptive, fraudulent or provide a poor user experience

Yahoo! even goes on to tell you exactly what they do want and this is an excellent guide to consider before submitting your site to Yahoo!

Pages Yahoo! Wants Included in Its Index

- Original and unique content of genuine value
- Pages designed primarily for humans, with search engine considerations secondary
- Hyperlinks intended to help people find interesting, related content, when applicable
- Metadata (including title and description) that accurately describes the contents of a web page
- Good web design in general

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