December 14, 2006
What Happened To Yahoo!'s Web Rank?
On March 18, 2004, Yahoo! released what they called Yahoo! Web Rank. Yahoo! explained it as follows:
Yahoo! Web Rank is the name that Yahoo! has given to a technical measurement of a particular URL's popularity. If you choose to enable the Yahoo! Web Rank feature on the Yahoo! Companion Toolbar, a toolbar icon will display the Yahoo! Web Rank value of each URL that you visit. The Yahoo! Web Rank values range from 1 to 10. This feature is currently in Beta release.
That page that described it used to be at http://help.yahoo.com/help/companion/webrank/ but now that page redirects.
You can take a look at the Wayback Machines copy of it from April 1, 2004. Lots of good old details on it.
Even Danny Sullivan wrote a huge write up on it at Search Engine Watch back on April 2, 2004.
Where did it go? Why did Yahoo! stop using it?
Forum discussion at DigitalPoint Forums.
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rustybrick in Yahoo! Search Optimization at December 14, 2006 7:33 AM
Comments (4)
Comments
It's hard for me to comprehend how Yahoo could possibly use something like WebRank when, after two years, they still can't handle 301 redirects properly. I mean, if you can't even figure out what "301 Permanently Redirected" means and consolidate SERPs to one domain, how in the heck do they expect to be able to calculate a page's WebRank?
Not one site that I have ever permanently redirected to another domain has ever completely switched over in Yahoo's index. Still to this day I have straggling pages from old, carefully and properly redirected domains, most of which were initially redirected 1-3 years ago and all of which were figured out by MSN/Google in a matter of weeks.
IMO, Yahoo's got to take some time to revisit the basics before they try and claim they've caught up to Google.
Posted by Andrew at December 14, 2006 11:08