Yahoo! Search Update Underway: 1/18 - 1/19 | Main | New Google AdSense Program Policies Targets Content Scrapers

January 19, 2007

Yahoo! Indexing & Crawling Google AdWords Links?

A WebmasterWorld post shows two respected members reporting that they have seen Google AdWords URLs within the Yahoo! Search index.

vicyankees says:

Is anyone else noticing that Yahoo is picking up Google Adwords links? I only know because i append all of my Google and other PPC links with a src=#*$!X and my tracking software also appends similar information.

WebmasterWorld moderator, bill, confirms this saying:

I just noticed this as well. I hadn't checked my Yahoo SERPs in a while and just noticed that they indexed several of my AdWords pages. What's up with that? I guess the first question would be, 'how do we get them to stop it?' Do I have to change all of my AdWords tracking codes?

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.



Like The Story? Vote For It On Yahoo Buzz! Or On Sphinn!

posted rustybrick in Yahoo! Search Optimization at January 19, 2007 7:38 AM Comments (9)

• Google Co-op Cartoon Barry

Comments

Its happening with more than just Adwords, I can see affiliate ID's in the index aswell.

 

Posted by PPCBlogger at January 19, 2007 07:52

Just set a tracking cookie and 301 to the correct page.

 

Posted by mad4 at January 19, 2007 08:53

On a related issue, I've had Google register as backlinks URLs resulting through Searchfeed's advertising.

 

Posted by Chris Beasley at January 19, 2007 10:25

I have the permanent cookie through my analytics (Omniture) and i set a 20 year out cookie as well for the domain. but they and most other analytics require that you still flag incoming traffic with an src=#*$!X - the whole point is using these in non-indexable scenarios such as PPC and email marketing efforts where spiders shouldn't be. It'd be even worse if we were getting charged the clicks for Slurp.

 

Posted by vic at January 19, 2007 23:31

Check this out one of my clients sites has got 2 .edu links off Google Adsense:

http://search.yahoo.com/search?p=linkdomain%3Aany-loans.co.uk+site%3A.edu

 

Posted by David Eaves at January 20, 2007 12:30

So new seo tactic,

Site target .edu domains and let Yahoo index!.

 

Posted by PPCBlogger at January 22, 2007 04:50

This is very true. I just got done with a discussion on it in Google webmaster discussion forum. The other thing that we were discussing is that Yahoo ignores 'nofollow' attributes and counts those links. The adwords has me puzzled, though. No one in the last discussion could explain how they can see links which are in JavaScript and don't show in the html source.

-tim

 

Posted by Tim at January 22, 2007 14:38

The Yahoo people have addressed this now in a recent blog post:
http://www.ysearchblog.com/archives/000415.html

Add this to your robots.txt:

User-Agent: Yahoo! Slurp
Disallow: /*source=AdWords

or whatever your tracking URL might be...

 

Posted by Bill at February 28, 2007 00:02

Yes we have noticed it too! With our Property search engine/find a local expert website. Must say that Yahoo is far much beter search engine then google! http://www.surf4aproperty.com

 

Posted by Darran at March 3, 2007 03:51

Post a comment (Note: Can Take 120 Seconds For Your Comment To Show Up)

Do you want us to save your personal Information?

Premium Sponsors + advertise

To subscribe to the Search Engine Roundtable, click here