It seems totally reasonable to me - sometimes the directory results are more useful or relevant than any other result. I can't see a reason why they should actively exclude them, but likewise, there shouldn't be any preference given to them. If they fit naturally into the algo and come up sometimes, it's fine with me.

After that post you wrote about "…competing against the directories/targeting the wrong keywords". I wrote a response on one of my blogs giving examples of exactly what you mention here: (http://onlinerealestate.blogspot.com/2005/01/real-estate-websites-vs-directories.html - please remove if necessary). I had read the post over at WW when it first came in and thought “finally, someone else has noticed this.”

Re: "Do you think Yahoo! has a little clause in the code that assigns a tad more weight towards the Yahoo! Directory categories?" YES!! I first noticed this when I was doing a search for music and their site listed as #1.

While it's disturbing and they should label it better - I do have to say that yes it is reasonable. It's their site - why not list their properties first?

As someone who works in the search industry, you may realize something that I've realized - of the listing on the first two pages of the major SEs does "natural" really exist anymore?

Can't we all now accept that w/o optimization you can forget being on those pages? So in an essence most people are paying for their listings, either by PPC on the right or on the “natural”/left side by paying for someone to do SEO work for them or by putting in the time to do it themselves... and as they say "time is money".

What do you think? Is the egalitarian web dead? I think so. I would get into another discussion about my personal forecast for the big SEs in the next few years – but that would be off the topic… though it’s related in part to this discussion here as well as copyright issues – but that would be off topic.. and I don’t want my comment booted - lol

Anyway, thanks for reading my rant.

Your Blog Groupie, (lol)
Natasha Robinson

I suppose the question is, from a practical SEO point of view, does this provide a stronger argument for paying the $299 to get your site listed in the Yahoo directory.

I've submitted a few sites, and the results have been pretty good. Not only do you get a link from the Yahoo directory, but also from Yahoo Canada, Yahoo India, Yahoo Australia and New Zealand, and a bunch of others. Traffic is decent.

Of course it's hard to measure exactly the effect those links are having on search engine rankings, but I'd be curious to know what other people are experiencing.

Interesting comments! I do think the value of a link from a directory such as Yahoo! is important. But regarding this entry, I think its critical for the yahoo properties to be labeled as such always (when included in a yahoo property).

Unfortunately that’s a true fact and a clear example is if you do the following search on yahoo: “cluj airport” (without quotes). Cluj is a Romanian county.

First 2 results are from a personal old page listed in the directory, while the official page is on position 5-6.

The directories, especially old ones like DMOZ or Yahoo, I think they do more harm to the results than good. Old outdated and unupdated pages have a higher PR, just because they are old and have tons of old links.

If at this fact we add that Google keeps on sandbox all new domains while promoting outdated informations, than I think we have a sign that something must be changed.