New Y! Algo Update

I know there has been some chatter around here about some indexing changes going on with Yahoo!. I've been focusing a bit on Yahoo! lately and noticed that over the weekend there seems to be a change that groups relative terms like the Google and MSN algo do. (For example the read both "New Jersey" and "nj" when returning results for searches including "nj"). this didn't happen previously in Yahoo!

The example from one of my sites is here: http://search.yahoo.com/search;_ylt...-t-501&ei=UTF-8

Notice second result, "nj" not included on page, in meta elements or in file name. Nor are there any links pointing to the page with nj in anchor.

Is anyone else seeing anything similar or other signs of changes? There seems to be something going on for a week or two now and I'm trying to figure out what all has changed.

It seems on my end that Yahoo is ranking some websites very high on their search result without using the web site's meta title or description. Also, it seems that when this happens, the page is not cached ( option to see the cache of the page is not there )

For example, let says you're searching for the term: stock photos

You'll see Getty images and istockphoto 1st and 3rd on the search result.

Title is different from what the page's meta title. Also cache link is not there....

I would not expect Getty or iStock to rank lower for those terms.

True. But can you explain the sudden change of Titles indexed by yahoo as well as the fact the page's "cache link" is not present on these specific sites but are available on all the other sites?

I guess what I'd like to know is:

1: Where does yahoo pull the title of these sites from
2: Why is the "cached link" absent on the right of the URL of these sites.

Also stock photos was just an example. You can find other results similar using all kind of terms

If you have a site in the Yahoo Directory they pull your title from there. To avoid that you can use <META NAME="ROBOTS" CONTENT="NOYDIR">

Very interesting things you point out. It seems the title is being pulled from the Yahoo! directory (and in these two cases the first part of the title that appears in the serps is the directory folder in which the two sites reside (they are actually in different directory indexes)). I did a few searches for other related sites in that are indexed in the Y! directory and they all have Y! directory titles instead of the page titles (another example here: http://search.yahoo.com/search;_ylt...-501-s&ei=UTF-8

I have not noticed this before (but because the main sites I check are not listed in the directory, it might have existed and I wouldn't have noticed).

On the second note, it looks like those two sites in question are getting some additional "quick links" (i guess similar to G sitelinks?). This appears to replace the option of a quick cache view.

Again, this is something I haven't seen before. The "create account" and "search images" links seem pretty damn useful so it's nice to see, though the current implementation, I still think trails Google's version a bit.

Can anyone else verify that these are new with the current update and not just things I have overlooked?

Thanks for your reply. Could you point out exactly where in the directory you find the exact same title.

I'm sorry but I cannot see it pulled from the Yahoo directory... I've been checking a lot of websites using different terms and yes, I found these websites on the yahoo directory but each and every single time, the title in the directory is different from what I see in Yahoo search result.
Also sometimes there isn't any extra links like you've mentioned. it's just the one url not cached, that's it.
.... this is driving me nuts!


I found another great example with the word "batteries"

The first | Third and fourth results are not cached and the title doesn't match the current site title or the yahoo directory

It's not new when SE have their algo update because they want to compete well with other SE's.

Yes Yahoo made an update and have released some details. It is called slurp 3.0 and they have introduced new spiders and are also performing software updates like when Google introduced the mozilla bots with the Big Daddy update. You can learn more about this update at this cool blog. http://blackwoodproductions.com/SEO-Blog/yahoo-slurp-30/

Hooray to you! thanks, now i'm starting to see a lot of articles about this...