Optimizing for Yahoo: The Next Big Thing

February 2004--Yahoo decides that they had had enough of Google subservience for their search results, finally pulling the plug on their alliance with Google for search technology, and aligning instead with Inktomi. Not only does this herald the advent of yet another eminent contender to defy Google’s dominion in the search market--Yahoo makes quite a significant chunk of the online traffic coming to a website--but it also sets the stage for a battle to be waged in SEO, with all sights now set on Yahoo.

With Google SERPs now beginning to make sense and offering some respite to most webmasters and SEOs, those webmasters and SEOs won’t be pulling any punches in trying their hands on the SERPs at Yahoo; the good SERPs at Yahoo that once used to come like a windfall for good optimization at Google now need to be specifically earned.

The New Scenario

The rules of the game have changed, and identifying the SEO rules is the name of the game. Thankfully, the new Yahoo SERPs still don’t show a marked departure from the existing Google algorithm, and the affinity between the two algorithms is still perceptible. This wipes out the need to make a fresh start while optimizing for Yahoo, and just weighing the Google SERPs against the Yahoo’s would suffice to make out the new algorithm Yahoo uses for ranking web pages.