Yahoo Search Updating: Weather Reports Go Away?

Feb 26, 2009 at 3:06pm ET by Barry Schwartz

I am fairly confident that Yahoo Search is currently updating their index and algorithm now. Dozens of webmasters and SEOs are noticing this update and discussing it at WebmasterWorld, but the Yahoo Search Blog has no mention of it.

Typically, Yahoo posts updates — which they call weather reports — when Yahoo is updating their index or shifting their algorithm. In fact, Yahoo was proud to grant Danny Sullivan’s wish back in 2005 for search engines to provide these weather reports. But Yahoo’s last “weather report” was in November 2008, three months ago. Typically, Yahoo does an update every month. So has Yahoo done away with the “weather reports?”

The past two or three updates did not receive “weather report” blog posts at the Yahoo Search Blog. But they did get mentioned at the Yahoo Japan Blog. In fact, you can read the translation of Yahoo Japan’s last weather report from the 25th. The same thing happened with the January Yahoo update, there was no blog post at the US Yahoo Search Blog, but there was on the Japan Yahoo Search Blog.

So this is my plea to Yahoo, please bring back the weather reports. At least open a Twitter account at http://twitter.com/ysearch (someone has it) and Twitter something.

Postscript by Matt: Hearing us loudly and clearly, Yahoo late today issued a weather report confirming that there are ongoing updates that should be “completed very soon.” Yahoo also says there have been two updates since the last weather report — one in December and one in late January. Thanks Yahoo!

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.

See more articles by Barry Schwartz >

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