February 7, 2007
BLIP
Going through my Backlinks on Yahoo Site Explorer I suddenly realized that it displays all backlinks regardless. There were open links, links with nofollow attribute in a tag as well as links from pages with meta robots nofollow.
This doesn’t mean Yahoo ignores nofollow as it may still exclude it from their link popularity algos but definetly it counts them all and possibly sends their spiders along.
This actually bothers me a lot - do they spider nofollow links too?
tags: blip, lzzr, seo, yahoo, yahoo site explorer, backlink, backlinks, link, link popularity, meta, nofollow, robots, spider
Posted by LZZR under Search Engine Blips | Comments (2)
December 25, 2006
BLIP
Stranegely, but Yahoo pays more attention to on-site factors than others. This a bit old-fashioned tactic possibly extends to meta tags as well.
tags: blip, seo, yahoo, meta, meta-tags, on-site optimisation, tag
Posted by LZZR under Search Engine Blips | Comments (0)
December 20, 2006
BLIP
This observation is derived from MSN ranking higher for a particular keyword pages and sites that have keywords in link text and link title of external links as opposed to sites and pages these links are pointing to.
This seems to be a reverse logic i. e. link text becomes a kind of a weighted keyword for a page where it is found, not for a page it links to.
PS this makes possible (and seemingly working for MSN) a good old SEO trick with loop linking (see page source) ;-).
tags: blip, msn, seo, external links, link title, links, page
Posted by LZZR under Search Engine Blips | Comments (0)
December 12, 2006
BLIP
Yahoo seems to be particularly keen on having and most likely using in-house data on relevancy of their SEPR by tracking user clicks. It is undeniable that they get this data, the question is how exactly they use it?
My take is that this data can not be used in an obvious way - you get more clicks you rank a step higher as if it was so it would inevitably switch on some sort of a positive feedback and eventually freeze the top ten result pages with the same results in the same order forever.
On the other hand this kind of data can be quite useful in cathegorizing the sites which can be used in clustering them according to subjects and categories (remember directory structure) as well as determining their linking potential and relevancy.
tags: blip, seo, yahoo, yahoo blip, clicks, data relevancy
Posted by LZZR under Search Engine Blips | Comments (0)
December 4, 2006
BLIP
It is a rather widespread rumour that inside the Yahoo corporate network the Yahoo searchpage is delivered with a link urging Yahoo employees to report inappropriate search results to the relevant department. Although to my knowledge it is the only evidence of handcrafting so fat I am inclined to believe it. More so considering that the company must have kept their personell with the relevant expertise and experience as well as appropriate organisational structure from the days it used to be a directory.
tags: blip, seo, sepr, yahoo, yahoo blip, handcrafting
Posted by LZZR under Search Engine Blips | Comments (1)
November 29, 2006
BLIP
According to this document found inside their own site Microsoft Live offers a kind of job which descriptiod deserves to be quoted in full:
Hand crafted results
When all else fails, and the ranking algorithms do not pass the confidence threshold, we fall back to delivering handcrafted results. Working on a team of approximately 132 other handcrafters in 26 worldwide markets, you will receive a user query, use all the available search engines to quickly scour the web for results, pick the top 10 results for this query, and send it on to the user. Successful handcrafters can typically find top 10 results for a real-time user’s query in less than 3.8 seconds. This is an opportunity to truly connect with customers, because the queries that get routed to you are precisely the ones that the engine cannot answer well. We will have adequate staffing to allow generous coffee and bathroom breaks.
If you are an expert at using at least 3 different search engines, well versed with American English/colloquial usage, and can type at > 149 words/minute as measured by the Simia-Lico method – come join us and delight users real-time!
and although it is dated by 2005 it is likely they continue the same way. It is strange that they even give an exact figure of these craftspeople - 132 which allows for a small speculation. With a managable rate of checking 100 queries a day 132 crafters will manage to handcraft 4818000 (about five millions) queries a year. I confess: in my calculation I did not allow any holidays or even weekends or days off to my handcrafters to take 
tags: blip, msn, microsoft live, seo, hand crafted, handcrafters
Posted by LZZR under Search Engine Blips | Comments (0)
November 28, 2006
BLIP
MSN more than the other two would rank higher for a particular keyword even smaller sites with domains like www.keyword.com or www.something-keyword.com
I’am not sure if this is simply due to the fact that it is a really young project or due to simplified algorithms… but so far it stays as a fact.
tags: , blip, msn blip, domains, keyword, msn, rank
Posted by LZZR under Search Engine Blips | Comments (0)
October 6, 2006
BLIP
MSN came out the last and if Google could be considered an elder, Yahoo as an unstable teenager that has a lot of stored knowledge but rarely reads it (see Yahoo used to be a Directory and Yahoo is based on Inktomi Slurp Blips), MSN is a baby with little or no experience.
It seems that whatever archived information MSN algorithms may refer to they simply have no time-depth to them. Hence it should create a more levelled playing field where Oldies have less advantage simply because MSN has no way of knowing exactly how long they’ve been out there.
tags: blip, blips, msn blips, seo, inktomi, msn, yahoo
Posted by LZZR under Search Engine Blips | Comments (0)
August 12, 2006
BLIP
Yahoo started as the largest human-edited directory on freaking earth and we should not forget that the ailing DMOZ used to be a popular reaction to an almost total monopoly Yahoo used to have in this market.
Gradually with volume increase this became less and less viable as a business model and Yahoo abandoned its Directory leaving only paid inclusion as the last remnance of the former gigantic and ambitious project. For some time it existed sucking results from Google (and DMOZ too?) but when they decided to compete and bought Inktomi (see Yahoo is based on Inktomi Blip) surely they added some expertise they accumulated throgh years of directory building and maintanance to their algorithms.
tags: blip, inktomi, directory, dmoz, paid inclusion, seo, yahoo, yahoo blip
Posted by LZZR under Search Engine Blips | Comments (1)
August 6, 2006
BLIP
Remember there was a Search engine called Inktomi and it even had its own spider named Slurp for whatever stupid reason? Remember when Yahoo in fight for its independence from Google results bought Inktomi and Inktomi Slurp suddenly became Yahoo Slurp? To remind you here is a snapshot of an Inktomi.com page taken from Webarchive and dated by 2002.
It pitches the qualities of their Web Search and we a rightly assuming that this plus Yahoo in-house Directory skills and experience are at the core of the current Yahoo engine.
tags: blip, seo, search, web, yahoo, yahoo blip, inktomi, slurp
Posted by LZZR under Search Engine Blips | Comments (1)
