How Does The Yahoo! Directory Rank Sites?

Feb 20, 2007 - 7:28 am 10 by
Filed Under Yahoo Directory

A WebmasterWorld thread asks how Yahoo! ranks sites within the Yahoo! Directory. As I explained years ago with Yahoo! Directory Ranks Pages by Popularity, but let's look at an example close to home.

Yahoo! has a Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Resources section, where they list out sites included in the directory in order of "popularity." Here is it...

seo-yahoo-directory-022007.gif

What makes one site more popular than the next? Let's look at another example close to home. The Internet Consultants New York section has my business ranking number one, above Agency and Razorfish.

yahoo-internet-consu-022007.gif

Let's analyze...

RustyBrick.com has 70,032 external links via Site Explorer. Agency.com only has 7,782 external links via Site Explorer. But Evolution.com has a whopping 152,059 external links via Site Explorer.

So why isn't Evolution.com number one?

Let's look at the SEO category:

Search Engine Watch has 213,437 external links via Site Explorer. WebmasterWorld has 275,587 external links via Site Explorer. SEOBook has 283,855 external links via Site Explorer. Search Engine Roundtable has 239,111 external links via Site Explorer.

All about the same.

How does Yahoo! define popularity?

By default, Directory site listings are presented sorted by popularity and relevance. Sites that are most popular with users or the most relevant to the category appear at the top of the site listings. The order of web sites or web documents is based upon Yahoo! Search Technology. If the category is large, the listings will display over multiple pages with pagination displayed at bottom of the page.

Sagerock at the WebmasterWorld suggest it is about click popularity. But I suspect it is a bit more detailed based on Yahoo! saying, "order of web sites or web documents is based upon Yahoo! Search Technology."

They can easily apply a popularity algorithm to the Directory and order pages by that. Now if we knew exactly how the popularity algorithm worked, then you know...

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

 

Popular Categories

The Pulse of the search community

Search Video Recaps

 
- YouTube
Video Details More Videos Subscribe to Videos

Most Recent Articles

Google

Google Search Pagination Bar Disappears For Some Searchers

Mar 24, 2025 - 7:46 pm
Google

Google AI Mode Access Roll Out Bug? Now Fixed.

Mar 24, 2025 - 6:10 pm
Search Forum Recap

Daily Search Forum Recap: March 24, 2025

Mar 24, 2025 - 10:00 am
Google Search Engine Optimization

Google Search: No Specific Date For Independent Sites Surface Better

Mar 24, 2025 - 7:51 am
Google Ads

Google Ads Search Terms Report Gets PMax Terms

Mar 24, 2025 - 7:41 am
Google News

Google: Removing EU News Publishers Had No Impact On Search Ad Revenue

Mar 24, 2025 - 7:31 am
Previous Story: Google AdSense Overview Page Goes Blank For 30 Minutes