Yahoo Removes Directory Links From Individual Search Results

Mar 26, 2007 at 9:04am ET by Barry Schwartz

Yahoo Removes Category (Directory) Links From Under Search Results at Search Engine Roundtable reports that Yahoo has removed the links from the individual search listings to the Yahoo Directory.

In the past, if a page had a listing in the Yahoo Directory, that directory listing would be shown as part of the page’s listing in web search results.

Here is a before and after that illustrates this:

Before:

After:

This seems to be a pretty big move from Yahoo. This is just one more step in the direction of folding the once very popular Yahoo Directory.

Postscript: Search Engine Watch has confirmation from Yahoo that they removed the links because they caused “clutter.”

Barry Schwartz is Search Engine Land's News Editor and owns RustyBrick, a NY based web consulting firm. He also runs Search Engine Roundtable, a popular search blog on very advanced SEM topics. Barry's personal blog is named Cartoon Barry and he can be followed on Twitter here.

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2 COMMENTS ON Yahoo Removes Directory Links From Individual Search Results

eric_ward, March 26th, 2007 at 3:43 pm ET:

Wow, slowly but surely, step by step, Yahoo pushes the once prized directory farther and farther from the user. I’d at least like them to include a toggle box option onthe adavnaced search page here
http://search.yahoo.com/web/advanced?ei=UTF-8
And how many people ever go to http://dir.yahoo.com/ anymore?

gary price, March 27th, 2007 at 9:53 am ET:

A couple of quick notes.

Also, although commercial directories continue to place a smaller role, THIS DOES not mean that several general and many vertical directories (most non-commercial) are out there. Most of these resources strive for quality vs. quantity, have collection development policies (what they will or will not add), and some even offer RSS feeds and/or “what’s new” newsletters.

+ LII.org
http://www.lii.org
Well organized, excellent annotations

+ Intute
http://intute.ac.uk
What’s New
http://www.intute.ac.uk/latest.html

+ Infomine
http://infomine.ucr.edu

+ IPL
http://www.ipl.org

+ AcademicInfo
http://www.academicinfo.net/table.html
The work of Mike Madin

Verticals (A Few Examples)

+ Business
http://globaledge.msu.edu/ibrd/

Education, Classroom Materials
+ The Gateway
http://www.thegateway.org/browse
and
FREE
http://www.free.ed.gov

+ Science
National Science Digital Library
http://nsdl.org/browse/

+ Museums
http://www.musee-online.org/
http://www.museumland.com/

+ Medicine/Health
MedlinePlus
http://www.medlineplus.gov
From the National Library of Medicine
Including thousands of pages for diseases and conditions.
http://www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus/healthtopics.html
Drugs, Supplements, and Herbal Information
http://www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus/druginformation.html
Tutorials
http://www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus/tutorial.html

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