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.
The sales rep at AT&T told me that Yahoo is giving them favoritism. Don’t know if there is any truth to that… Just the words of a salesman spoken to me.
I can tell you that on AT&T’s web package they guarantee you a certain number of clicks per month, however they are essentially pay per click the way it is presented.
We were guaranteed that Yahoo organic results would show up with my business and my predetermined categories. He claimed the power of Yahoo and AT&T is the offer for the first and starting tier for their clients. Then with graduated increases in pricing they promised to throw in organic Google results. Who is sleeping with whom? How do they determine that?
I know guaranteed clicks are different than pay per click but the line sure seems blur in this case.
Isn’t that what I was paying for, promised Organic in actual results? They did disclose that if you did not get your allotted hits for the month they would roll over till they were used up.
If AT&Ts salesman told you, basically, that Yahoo skews the organic results especially for them, that’s one heck of a statement.