On Monday when I ran my ranking reports for my clients, I noticed a bunch of red X’s (dropped) on their Yahoo! rankings.  Since these clients have consistently been ranking in the top one or two positions for various local-related terms, and they’re still in the top slot on Google, I thought it was just an error with my ranking software.

However, it looks like other people are starting to experience the same thing.  Dammit.

So ok Yahoo!, you’ve totally dismissed some good local websites from your index.  Will they be back, or do you think your new (crappy) results are better?  Are you penalizing us for optimizing our clients to rank for “service + town name” searches?  Or is there something else going on?

Personally, the clients that took the biggest hits for me are all relatively new sites (2004+) .  They’ve just recently (within the last 4-8 months) done a redesign and are not listed in a ton of IYPs.  Is this the problem?  Is age an issue here?

Instead of good quality websites, should I be more concerned about Yelp, Local.com and Mixx?  That seems kind of backwards to me.