Here’s one reason why Yahoo Rankings & Google Rankings can be mutually exclusive (brainiacs: that means you can’t have them both simultaneously), in the absense of major brand recognition or humongous link pop.
Recently a client asked me if a decline in Yahoo rankings (formerly all top 3’s, now just top 10’s) had anything to do with the increase in organic Google rankings. Naturally, he wanted to improve the Yahoo rankings as quickly as possible. My initial thought was “fine, no problem, I know how to do that“, but it was immediately blocked with the recollection of another jewel this client provided me just a few days earlier:
…In the future we should avoid all “Grey Areas” with regard to Google Ethics and Guidelines. We don’t want to ever take a chance of having our Site pulled down permanently. Even if our competitors are doing Gray Area tactics we should not. Google has gotten me a little scared of what they can do if they want to. Now, that we are ranking extremely well everyone wants to see us go down, especially our competitors. Everyone will be watching our every move. We have to be careful….
The client makes some totally valid points and I absolutely respect his wishes to be boyscout white-hat But what does this mean for the off-white SEO tactics that took the site straight to the top of Yahoo?? Anyone can blog comment spam their own way to the top of Yahoo or MSN. That’s why so many of the sites atop those search engines are so noticeably absent from Google’s page 1. But if a client really wants to abide by those golden rules, and if said client is “in-between link popularity empires”, what are the consequences for multi-engine success??
This really speaks to the nature of the gray area that really makes up the vast majority of the real SEO field of battle. I’m sick of anyone who talks about “white hat” vs. “black hat” (yes, I totally see and cringe at this irony, albeit slightly strengthened by those who tread before me), but there has to be some discussion about battle on the field of gray.
What do you think? Considering the disclaimer above (major brand recognition or huge link pop), are white-hat seo and top yahoo rankings exclusive? Are these top Google rankings & top Yahoo rankings exclusive? What are we missing here??
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95. We are waking up and linking to each other. We are watching. But we are not waiting.
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December 8th, 2006 at 3:24 pm
I have an ecommerce site that ranked very well in Yahoo and not at all in Google during the first months of the site going live. After a year, my Google ranking has gone up to the first page and my Yahoo ranking is in page 4. I have first hand experience of this phenomenon. I wish I’m in the first page of both search engines but ranking well in Google is the next best thing.
December 9th, 2006 at 1:02 am
You’re right, Bien, the general consensus seems to be that it’s just not worth blog spamming or buying run-of-site links just to run up the link count and get that #1 Yahoo ranking or even the MSN ranking that you’ll get. There’s just not enough traffic there to justify the risk of damaging or diluting your link equity in Google, where quality > quantity all day long.
December 10th, 2006 at 2:36 pm
[…] Hoy estaba leyendo un post de abhilash que me ha hecho recordar una sensación que tengo respecto al mundo SEO. Los que conocen como trabajo saben que mis mejores resultados de posicionamiento han sido siempre con Google. Yahoo y Live nunca “se me han dado bien”. Se suele decir que el buscador más dificil para posicionar es Google; yo tengo muchos números uno en Google y ninguno o casi ninguno en Yahoo o Live, donde no suelo cosechar grandes resultados.Es importante aclarar que yo nunca posiciono para ningún buscador específico. Yo pienso los webs de manera que sean entendibles 100% por el usuario y por el buscador ( en ese orden, si hay conflicto ), y siempre - una y otra vez - obtengo buenos resultados en Google y malos en Live y Yahoo. Vaya, parecería que soy un experto en Google. Pues no. […]
January 2nd, 2007 at 2:41 pm
[…] Abhilash. Awesome post: Do You Really Want that #1 Ranking in Yahoo?? […]
February 11th, 2007 at 7:42 pm
I got high quality site http;//www.billgatesmicrosoft.com but yahoo doesn’t rank me higher,i don’t know why?
May 21st, 2007 at 12:28 am
Pretty neat explanation.
Abhilash, Need to know your other articles. Please mail me at nick@talentshakes.com.
Regards
Nick.
www.talentshakes.com
June 16th, 2007 at 11:10 pm
this whole ranking business is mysterious at the very least. not in the sense that it’s overly sophisticated but that it’s inconsistent - as far as google goes.
we have a web site called www.powwwerpages.com (no
typo … its www.powwwerpages.com with 3 w in the
middle of the word po er. )
when you click on it (please do …
) you’ll see it’s
pretty clean and clear yellow pages web site, with a
few other features, like powwwerlinks, a free seo
offer to customers, etc.
two weeks ago, we ranked no 3, 5, 6, 8, and 9 on
google depending on the combination of the words
b2b online yellow pages search engine and seo. pretty
good, i think!
a week later, we had only 1 first page ranking. today,
we are not even on page 3 anymore. difficult to ex-
lain this away with other companies suddenly paying
for placement.
as against that, www.powwwerpages.com ranks con-
sistently high on yahoo. (msn: forget those; they
never had us anywhere to begin with… not even
when we actually typed powwwerpages ! )
explain that convincingly, (not the yahoo rankings, but the sudden discrepancy!) and i’ll buy you a case of beer >> (first submitted convincing reply only: please e-mail to
info@powwwerpages.com
cheers. ernie
June 28th, 2007 at 4:38 am
Actually seo is within your reach only if you follow the golden rules as per said by Mr.Patel. If you get on top 10 in Google for your at least 2 primary keywords, you will be among the richest one. Guaranteed indeed.
July 3rd, 2007 at 4:30 pm
Yes, I still want that #1 Google ranking, and the riches that accompany it! Looks like we’re all chasing after our fifteen minutes of fame.
July 18th, 2007 at 6:36 pm
guess what - since my last contribution here on june 16, our web site,
www.powwwerpages.com has gone from strength to strength on google.
just a few keywords’ worth of search (online b2b yellowpages), and we
are ranking on page 1 at google. we are pleased, needless to say.
(and you are still welcome to visit powwwerpages.com !)
at the same time, the google / yahoo “seesaw” theory as i have now officially
called it (you may quote / credit me… : )) in a few articles, seems to have a lot of truth in it: for the past 10 days or so, yahoo has fallen out of love with us. even a sequence of 5-6 keywords fails to merit a ranking within the first
5 pages.
can these engines be THAT different? this would be worth a research study.
btw, microsoft is completely hopeless. i’m not saying this out of a hurt ego
but we are totally nowhere on msn.
thankfully, it’s google that call the shots in the search engine world.
have a nice summer: ernie (tom) shwartz
August 22nd, 2007 at 3:58 pm
I’ve yet to see my site in Yahoo. I don’t know what kind of techniques they use,but it doesn’t make sense when you rank high in Google and none in yahoo. It would be nice if yahoo wrote an explanation on how it ranks it’s sites. This is why I don’t even use yahoo for searches. It returns only 30% of what google has. Why?I have no idea.
February 28th, 2008 at 4:41 am
I used to be ranked very highly on yahoo. However, after a year I dropped off the first page. Unfortuantly, my ranking on
google has not improved