Yahoo’s SEO Guildlines
Content quality guidelines
This article outlines the quality guidelines for website inclusion in Yahoo Search.
Yahoo strives to provide the best search experience on the Web by directing you to high-quality and relevant web content in response to your search query.
Pages Yahoo wants included in the index:
- Original and unique content of genuine value.
- Pages designed primarily for humans, with search engine considerations a secondary concern.
- Hyperlinks intended to help people find interesting, related content, when applicable.
- Metadata (including title and description) that accurately describes the contents of a web page.
- Good web design in general.
Unfortunately, not all web pages contain information what is valuable to a user. Some pages are created deliberately to trick the search engine into offering inappropriate, redundant or poor-quality search results. This is often called “spam.” Yahoo does not want these pages in the index.
Some, but not all, examples of the types of content that Yahoo does not want included:
- Pages that harm the accuracy, diversity or relevance of search results.
- Pages dedicated to redirecting the user to another page (doorway pages).
- Multiple sites or pages offering substantially the same content.
- Sites with numerous, unnecessary virtual hostnames.
- Pages produced in great quantities, which have been automatically generated or which are of little value (cookie cutter pages).
- Pages using methods to artificially inflate search engine ranking.
- The use of text or links that are hidden from the user.
- Pages that give the search engine different content than what the end user sees (cloaking).
- Sites excessively cross linked with other sites to inflate a site’s apparent popularity (link schemes).
- Pages built primarily for the search engines or pages with excessive or off-topic keywords.
- Misuse of competitor names.
- Multiple sites offering the same content.
- Sites that use excessive pop-ups which interfere with user navigation.
- Pages that seem deceptive, fraudulent, or provide a poor user experience.