Yahoo Directory - how good is it?

What can a website gain by register to the yahoo directory besides just being there?

Will it improve my PR's at yahoo?
Will it drive traffic to my site?

Also, I understand that they don't accept any site but still charge you $299.

What are the chances they won't accept my site (assuming it's fine and no black hat stuff) and why?

Yahoo is a good directory to be listed in.

A: It will drive good traffic to your site
B: im guessing by PR you mean your SERP's, after a little google searching i found this, and I quote:

"My position hasnt changed in yahoo. My intention was to hopefully improve my positioning within the Google SERPS. Now I know youre all probably wondering .."huh, you want to improve your position with google and you register with yahoo?"

I did a little bit of investigating. Nothing fancy. Just ran up a few keyword searches within both yahoo and google for "garage sales" The comparisons were interesting.

The yahoo directory listing and google search were very similiar.

I had the money - so I gave it a shot. Now its just a matter of seeing whether there is a relationship between yahoo directory and google.

Obviously it cant hurt any.

About 75% of my traffic comes from yahoo, and Im getting approximately 30 ads a week. Only a small amount - probably 5% of my traffic is coming from google which is something i desperately want to improve on.

Hope this helps.

RJ

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HI guys,
Well its been some time now since I went ahead with this and I just thought I would recap on the subject.

Since listing my site within yahoo directory my page ranking has infact dropped (not immediately) from an initial PR of 3 to now 2.

My rankings within MSN and Yahoo are identical to that of what they were before listing on yahoo directory.

As for Goolge, well what can I say? My site is still ranking inconsintantly for the same keywords - between pages 6 to 11.

So in response to the original question....

Is it worth listing in yahoo directory?

My initial response would indeed be no, however there still may be a number of other issues that may indirectly affect the PR of my site.

However, for those thinking that being listed within yahoo directory will provide a quick and easy way of improving your PR - think again, as this is certainly not the case.

RJ "

I personally have not tested anything like this. I Do just hold on to my nuts and pay the $300 for each site i make. I get it back through traffic > Sales so its worth it for me. But it strongly depends which industry you are in, i guess.

My view is that if you have a poor PR and few backlinks, when you get your site in the Yahoo directory, it will give you a big kick, and therefor those people will say that it makes a big change.

But if you already have a nice PR (around 5) and lots of BL, I don't think you'll see a big change.

Take from this what you like. I hope i have been of some assistance!

Thank you so much. This is very helpful.

I'd like to ask a few things:

The Yahoo directory drives traffic? How?
Will I have visitors coming through the Yahoo directory?
I've heared it can "help" your ranking in the Yahoo SERP's - is tat true?

The Yahoo! Directory will drive traffic to you becuase thats what a good directory does, people go there, search for what they want, if they want what you have to offer, then you will get valuable clicks. This is industry dependant, so if you are selling 'Mobile Phones' or something, there will be a lot of interest > Traffic, if you sell 'snow leopard milking kits' there wont be much interest so little to no traffic. Have a look in there to see what else comes up for your keywords and then make an educated guess as to whether people will be looking for your product, or not.

I think, primarily, if your site is a new site then i'd say yes, it could "help" your SERPs, the older the site, the less a Yahoo listing will help your SERPs.

Please any one comment on this aswell, we could always use more than one Point of View

I wasn't sure if people register to this directory 'cause it helps their SERP's or 'cause of traffic. But traffic is great for me as well.

You can use it to gain better serps and more traffic, just note it seems the more mature the site, the less it will effect your SERP's.

Good luck with that one Weee!

Thanks!